Advances in Archaeological Practice is a new digital journal of the Society for American Archaeology.
Now the future of archaeology and especially of American archaeology is in the hands of Christopher D. Dore, University of Arizona & ASM Affiliates, Inc. He invites archaeologists to be part of SAA history and to submit manuscript for the inaugural issues.
American archaeology is leading in the world as a theory and practice. There are grey literature and publications connected with low quality peer reviewers, although on the whole it is based on good traditions in field research and world recognized theoretical contributions.
The role of Christipher D. Dore is extremely tough. If he wants to build really an innovative and valuable journal, he needs to avoid both pseudo-advance and misleading articles together with isolating the role of connections and promotions of authors just to make names. Archaeology is a highly competitive field of research and publications need to meet the social stage of free access and high quality peer reviewers based on two criteria – the personality of the authors and quality of the publication. Because of terrifying social practices (e.g. Cashdan-Tringham syndrome) it is very actual the non-for-profit organizations to use consumer reports and everything online and even as narrative in order to decide whether candidates should be approved to participate not only in this journal, but also at the Annual Conferences. Absence of criteria of positive personalities as only participants at the forums of non-for-profit organizations places us in a position to see our names together with corrupted archaeologists and even collaborators of crimes (e.g. psychotronic terrorism). Most recently William Parkinson (The Field Museum) has invented a new terrifying corruption – using money given for archaeological grant to host a woman Bulgarian who in fact was writing a dissertation on “socialistic town” (subject - narratives). It is very curious whether the technology of the The Field Museum was used for gathering of these narratives via Skype, for instance. It is not a comedy, but a tragedy since it concerns the destiny of one of the most corrupted professional archaeologies in Europe – Bulgarian. Instead a critical analysis of the corrupted and criminal professional archaeological practices, money of American tax-payers has been using for even more terrifying corruption – for mythologization of one of the most petrifying regimes in human history – the communist regime.
Even more. Most recently Bulgarian media has announced that more than 100,000 Euros will be given to the Museum of History in Stara Zagora for 3D scanning of archaeological finds. Is it really this project the best what can be done with such money in Bulgaria for archaeology in museum and why was the money not distributed among more museums?
Another recent story from Bulgaria is also critical. Western male writers with positions in leading universities can been seen on the advisory board of an electronic journal where was published a text with missing academic qualities and without citation of non-Bulgarian authors following the corrupted traditions from the communist regime when archaeology was occupied by corrupted communists who had practiced pseudoscience and manipulated the discipline in context of terrifying social practices (Todorova syndrome). How to believe that these western writers together with now legendary William Parkinson’s Bulgarian project do not corrupt their academic positions and are not danger for all quality researchers who can be damaged in a variety of ways, in particular by contributing to filling the social space of archaeology with pseudoscientists with corrupted social behavior? Last but not least, the psychotronic terrorism from Bulgaria coming from the professional archaeology (Todorova-Georgieva with others) seems to have been expanding instead revealing and punished. Not to mention another legendary story like the dissertation of Gajdarska at Durham University which does not have even quality of bachelor paper and includes a series of non-ethical actions including pages that looks like written by J. Chapman (this had happened in the 21st century in Durham!!!). Most curiously, Anthony Harding had reviewed this work which fact may also explains why his name had showed up on the advisory board of the mentioned electronic journal – probably his role is just to decrease the professional level of archaeology in Europe.
In other words, advance in archaeological practice is first of all rebirth of professionalism in archaeology at a global scale, economical use of tax-payers and privately sponsored money for really valuable projects and searching for values which are not only narrow archaeological values, but have a global humanistic role. Avoiding grey literature and pseudoscience also seems a dreaming goal including opportunity the new journal to become also a piece of grey literature if does not face actual problems from perspectives of humanity and global society and does not cut any roads of connections and making artificial names with publications which are not enough engaging, as well as publishing articles which in fact cover of under the table corruptions and even crime in archaeology (authoring even by corrupted people or related to crime).
Good luck of the new journal in this so critical for archaeology period! Hopefully it will become one of the means the global humanistic archaeology to become the only archaeology of the 21st century. It is very easy the new journal of SAA to become the strongest voice in archaeology if really follows the call for changes in archaeology and the call for rehumanization of archaeology.
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