Editorial: Open Archaeology in Challenging Times

Archaeology has often had to adapt to fast-changing social and cultural contexts (Trigger, 2006). Just getting used to the impact of Covid-19, 2022, is not an exception. This year the world and the archaeological communities were challenged by Russia’s illegal invasion and attack on Ukraine, with its “casual” effect on world economy and energy predicaments, as well as the ongoing and escalating climate crisis.

After years of Glasnost and improved international collaboration between scholars in the old “east” and “west,” which have resulted in many important archaeological discoveries and research outcomes, contemplate the Denisovan, we are now forced to start to deal with a refigured “iron wall.” Back on square one. Condemnation from people from all over the world is joined by brave Russian academic colleagues protesting against the terror of war, and in doing so, risking both their own and their family safety. On the other side of the trenches, Ukrainian colleagues risking their lives in protecting and hiding away archaeological remain from intruders. Reports claiming looting of archaeological objects are so frequent that international news agencies stopped reporting on it. This is far from new – history does repeat itself – but part of the Orwellian thesis stating that whoever controls the present, and the narrative about the present-past, controls the future.

All this is happening while the effect of the climate crisis is becoming more evident. In Europe, adolescent people have started prosecuting nations and states for not acting on the climate crises. Here in Australia, where I am sitting and composing this preface, villages and towns that have been affected by flooding every decennium or so have now met inundation after inundation, some places more than handful times within a year. Last year, these areas were affected by draughts and fires. Pacific Islanders can only watch how their beaches erode in vain, awaiting the deluge. All at a time when populistic parties denying climate crises are on the rise.

The world gone wrong. How can an archaeology in the time of the Anthropocene help us come to terms with all challenges ahead? What can we do as academics?

In perplexing times like these, many of us find comfort in daily routines and in trying to go on with life as usual as possible. To dig. To write and publish. This, for example, was an open strategy among Danish and Norwegian colleagues during the Nazi occupation during World War II. To prevail and persist, they continued with their excavations and daily routines in the museums and universities, some even writing excavation reports and research articles in prison, going on “as good as it could be done.” Comradeships and jokes, not least irony, became a weapon against the oppressors (Goldhahn, 2019). Importantly, archaeology can work as a counter-narrative and counter-archive in difficult times, contesting unsustainable claims about who we are, where we come from, why, and how the past are made meaningful and significant for the future. Archaeology does matter.

One way of resistance and keeping a sense of normality is to continue to publish excellent and thought-provoking archaeology. In 2022 Open Archaeology has, so far, received nearly 80 manuscripts. Of these, 62 are now available online. This editorial is number 63.

A significant contribution to Open Archaeology has been realized through our invitation to publish special issues with guest editors, something we wish to continue with in the future. This year we conclude the special issue from volume 7 (2021), dealing with The Early Neolithic of Europe (part II), which has been guest-edited by F. Borrell, I. Clemente, M. Cubas, J. J. Ibáñez, N. Mazzucco, A. Nieto-Espinet, M. Portillo, S. Valenzuela-Lamas, and X. Terradas. The concluding papers deal with Neolithic flint quarries from the Iberian Peninsula, Dalmatia’s stone blade technology, and southern Europe’s neolithization processes.

A similar theme is explored in a festschrift celebrating the academic achievements of Lech Czerniak on his 70th Birthday, edited by J. Pyzel, K. I. Michalak, and M. Z. Barański, which asks the frequent question What is new in the Neolithic. Here we learn about Czerniak’s dedicated research and archaeological life, but also households, and hamlets of the Brześć Kujawski Group, the importance of sheep and goats during the Lengyel culture, the Enolithic process in the Middle Warta Catchment area, the intra-visibility of megalithic monuments in the west Pommerian Funnel Beaker Culture, the Neolithic in western Carpathia, the social and cultural transformation in the Targowisko regions, and more. The very shaping of the question, like Do we finally know what the Neolithic is?, seems to be a part of the answers reached about what was new in the Neolithic.

Sprung from the EAA annual meeting in Kiel 2021, G. Di Maida, Ch. Horn, and S. Schaefer-Di Maida have edited a special issue on newly developed digital methods and typology. The editors identify a risk that new state-of-the-art digital methodologies could end in a renewed positivist naïveté. Still, they argue that implementing new digital tools has great potential to renew and advance necessary typological studies. As they phrase it: “projects based on large-scale digitization of archaeological material has brought to the fore an urgent need for a conversation, which critically reflects on issues, connected to cataloguing and classification of this ample amount of collected data.” Six case studies present and demonstrate the potential of combining big data, digital methods, and analysis of typologies of material culture. These studies range from Paleolithic research in Europe to ceramic analysis from the Neolithic from the alpine area in Europe and Japan, north European Bronze Age rock art, late Neolithic burial practice in today’s China, and Medieval and post-Medieval pottery from the Iberian Peninsula.

The most prolific of these special issues have been the journal’s collaboration with “Meso2020,” the Tenth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, which has been guest edited by T. Perrin, B. Marquebielle, S. Philibert, and N. Valdeyron. The contributions have been dealing with various topics. I especially enjoyed the contribution dealing with multispecies relations and ontologies, but there seems to be something for everyone, such as the studies of the social importance of modified animal teeth, landscape analyses, stone tool galore, Mesolithic rock art, the forever present questions about what caused the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, bone morphological studies and sculls, big data, seafood feastings, colonization processes, site variability and mobility patterns, the relationship between fishers, foragers and hunters, ontological twists and turns, submerged occupation sites, iconography and symbolism, or “Montology.” Yes, there seems to be something for everyone. From an editorial point of view, the varied research about the Mesolithic period has never been so intriguing and thought-provoking. And there are even more outcomes from the Meso2020 to come.

We are now inviting contributions to several special issues of Open Archaeology, including:

• Scales and interaction in the Bronze and Iron Age Central Mediterranean, with guest editors E. Holt and D. Schirru;

• Archaeology of migration: Moving beyond historical paradigms, with guest editors C. Judson and H. Nol;

• Reconsidering the Chaîne Opératoire: Towards a multifaceted approach to the archaeology of techniques, with guest editors M.-E. Porqueddu, C. Sciuto, and A. Lamesa;

• Bricks under the scope: Microscopic and macroscopic approaches to the study of earthen architecture, with guest editors M. Lorenzon, M. Kinzel, and B. Cutillas-Victoria;

• Ancient cultural routes: Past transportations infrastructures as a two-way interaction between society and environment, with guest editors F. Fulminante, F. Mazzilli, and F. Engelbogen, and;

• Microhistory and archaeology, with guest editor J. A. Quirós Castillo.

If you are interested in submitting an article to any of these special issues of Open Archaeology, or a research article of interest, please get in touch with us through our home page, where you also find information how to submit your contribution.

Besides the mentioned special issues, we also find a vast and varied contribution from peer-reviewed articles in Open Archaeology 8. The different topics are captivating, ranging from the sensorial experience of caves, wooden shawabtis from the famous burial of Tutankhamun, the trade of human remains on TikTok, Nuraghi monuments from the Sardinian Bronze and Iron Age, quest about how to combine metal detector analyses and geophysical survey, a study of the block-out capital Berenike from the Red Sea coast, proof of tuna fishing in north European Neolithic, faunal remains in Iberian cremation practices, wineries from Ambarçay in Diyarbakir, Iroquoian maize processing, Chalcolithic kiln from the Bora Plain in today’s Kurdistan, Bell Beaker pottery and its relevance for interpreting mobility from the Alpine region and the (re)use of Megalithic structures in Upper Rhône Valley, and more. Open Archaeology 8 also includes a review article about archaeological practices and societal challenges, which we believe will spark thought-provoking conversations and debates.

As the Editor-in-Chief, I am happy to see that Open Archaeology attracts authors from many countries and, evidently from the above, archaeological research from many areas of the world. In this volume, there are nine papers dealing with archaeological research from today’s Poland. We also find contributions discussing archaeological finds from France (5), the British Islands (4), Portugal (4) and Spain (5), Norway (4) and Sweden (4), the United States (2), Denmark (1), Italy (1), Canada (1), China (1), Egypt (2), Turkey (2) Switzerland (3), Germany (1), Ukraine (3), Croatia (1), Iraq (1), Jordan (1), Japan (1), and Russia (1). The authors of these articles are often multi-disciplinary and originate from even more countries. There is a clear focus on European archaeology in Open Archaeology 8, but we also find studies targeting north Africa, north America, and Asia. I hope the latter articles are a prognostic trend and that the journal will attract more studies from Asia, South America, Africa, and the Antipode in the future.

A journal such as Open Archaeology depends on its contributors and its readers. Our journal is blessed with an excellent and effective managing editor and staff at our publisher, as well as a long row of active editors dealing with (i) archaeological heritage preservation and management, (ii) archaeological science, (iii) theory and interpretation, and (iv) world archaeology, doing my work of the Editor-in-Chief rewarding. Not to forget, a successful journal like Open Archaeology also depends on its members of the editorial boards, and our many trusted reviewers, who contribute with their time and minds, which results in more comprehensive and solid research publications. Thank you all for your vital contributions.

Editor-in-Chief

Professor Joakim Goldhahn