Advances in Archaeological Practice covers are most often experienced as a tiny thumbnail shot either on the Cambridge Core website, or perhaps on social media. Have you ever noticed them? Do you have any favorites? In this blog we highlight the images chosen for the “front” of our born-digital journal, as well as share some exciting news (you’ll have to read to the end to find out what that is…!).

During its first five years, Advances had a cover image distinct from that of sister journals American Antiquity and Latin American Antiquity that nobody quite understands (Figure: Cover 5_1). In 2018, Advances was allowed to have a cover in line with the other SAA journals. At the time we were editing an article by Monique van den Dries and Miyuki Kerkhof published in a special issue on Interpreting and Presenting Archaeology. Their article, titled “The Past Is Male: Gender Representation in Dutch Archaeological Practice,” examined the intersections between depiction, interest, and participation in archaeology in a simplified gender binary study of Dutch and European public. Building on work by Diane Gifford-Gonzalez and Cornelius Holtorf, they asked whether the presentation of the past affects who participates today, and they considered, too, the representation of the archaeologist themselves in exhibitions, schoolbooks, and popular books.

Points they made were emphasized in an online panel discussion titled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter.” Justin Dunnavant and Alexandra Jones spoke about representation in archaeology. They commented that many archaeologists might be inspired to choose the career because of popular figures like Indiana Jones, but   “…we don’t have people who look like us in these popular images and so we don’t naturally become attracted to the fields, and I think that if we begin to change that it’ll shift the entire conversation” (Dunnavant @ minutes 32:20). Jones added that popular books and textbooks for K-12 children don’t depict Black archaeologists and then asks us to think critically about the image we put out there and what images of the discipline we perpetuate (@ minute 34:45).

Our goal in the creation of the covers of Advances in Archaeological Practice has been to show archaeological practice and the practice that we aspire to. So many people value archaeology, beyond those who make a living through work, and we want to encourage engagement with students and professionals, communities and supporters. We have tried to show people in the field, lab, museum, and office, on landscapes and at computers.  With the articles in the journal and the images on the cover, we have hoped that we can help people imagine themselves engaging with archaeology. Some of our favorite covers are below and writing this blog was a chance to reach out to the authors and learn a little bit more. As one of the authors in “ The Future of American Archaeology Engage the Voting Public or Kiss Your Research Goodbye!” Bonnie Styles (now, Association of Science Museum Directors) told the story of how the beloved Illinois State Museum became a pawn in a political battle between the governor and the legislature in 2015. The photograph of the families supporting the museum was a perfect image for our very first new cover on issue 6(1).

I love the moment captured by Christine Lee ‘s photograph (University of Mississippi) on the cover of issue 7(1), a special issue on The Practice and Ethics of Skeletal Conservation.  Christine’s article taught readers about skeletal conservation and preservation through her experiences working in China and Mongolia. The photo shows a laboratory inside a traditional Mongolian nomadic home, or ger. Christine is working with two undergraduate students from the National University of Mongolia, who are helping her record dental nonmetric traits using the Arizona State University dental scoring system. The large bowl in back is a batch of yoghurt being made.  Jiji, the young girl, has been going on excavation with her dad, the excavation director, since she was four years old, and the student in the middle of the photograph was her favorite babysitter that season. When we published the cover, Christine checked in with the family first, and Jiji was so excited to be a cover girl; now she’s just graduated from high school.

Digital archaeology isn’t easy to depict, but the cover of issue 7(2) captures it. The image of Shawn Graham (Carleton University) accompanies the article “Building Scholars and Communities of Practice in Digital Heritage and Archaeology” which talks about what was learned from the Michigan State University/National Endowment for the Humanities Institute for Digital Archaeology hosted by Ethan Watrall and Lynne Goldstein. Shawn explained to me that he had created a topic model of 20,000 archaeological articles culled from JSTOR from the 1930s to the 2010s to trace the emergence of digital archaeology. “As I recall, I could show that the ideas of ‘thinking digitally’ predate the emergence of anything we’d called computational or digital archaeology… The larger talk was about data mining more generally, especially of legacy archaeological data.”  The topic model browser he is teaching can be found today at: https://shawngraham.github.io/archae-topic-models/20000/. Go visit and continue to be awed.

As I write this, the wildfires on the north rim of Grand Canyon National Park are in the headlines. The image on the cover of issue 8(3) was taken in 2016 when Zuni religious leaders traveled by the Colorado River with Daniel Byers and the crew of Skyship films to document the importance of the Grand Canyon to Zuni collective and individual cultural identities. The film’s purpose was to bring the place of emergence to the Zuni community. In his article in a theme issue on Creative Mitigation, Kurt Dongoske (Pueblo of Zuni Tribal Historic Preservation Officer) describes how the development of the film was presented to the Bureau Reclamation “…as a means of resolving adverse effects to Zuni ancestral sites and traditional cultural places caused by Glen Canyon dam operations and the development of the Grand Canyon National Park, which treated this sacred place as a natural Disneyland.” The 28 minute video Then, Now, and Forever: Zuni in the Grand Canyon is available on YouTube.

For a couple of years, this cover of issue 10(2), was our social media image. In 2022, Ashley Lemke (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Nicole Bucchino Grinnan (University of West Florida), and Jay V. Haigler (Diving With a Purpose) published their article on how to overcome the skills, financial, and educational barriers to inclusivity in the practice of underwater archaeology. They introduced us to college and university programs, non-profits, and ways to approach the challenges of expanding  archaeological research, preservation, and conservation on submerged landscapes. Diving With a Purpose is a non-profit that provides education and training programs, mission leadership, and project support with a focus on the African Diaspora, and the photograph shows two of their divers, one an instructor and one a student learning how to do underwater documentation and site recording. To get a sense of their award-winning work, follow this link: Diving With a Purpose.

The scale of the problems that the Florida Public Archaeology Network  (FPAN) tackles through work, including the North American Heritage at Risk project, is hard to grasp. For example, the impacts of the changing sea levels on tangible and intangible cultural resources along shorelines is far too enormous to manage, even after we try to quantify it. There is no “project” to fund mitigation of the disappearance of entire coastal landscapes. So, the authors in theme issue 12(3)  teach us with pragmatism and realism, showing us how professionals and volunteers collaborate to monitor and document sites at risk, with particular focus on the Southeast United States and the United Kingdom. And, in the photo on the cover of issue we see this tension embodied in one person, Emily Jane Murray (FPAN), at a coquina well during a monitoring trip to Shell Bluff Landing after Hurricane Irma in 2017.  Emily’s colleague and one of the issue guest editors, Sarah Miller, updated us, saying that due to safety concerns and in concordance with all partners, archaeologists completed documentation of the site in 2023 and management of the site has ceased, leaving the site to the ocean.

Our guidelines for an Advances cover photo are that, unless we can share an archaeologically employed dog,  we like to have people’s faces. With our faces often in the dirt or a microscope this can be challenging! We also need permission from subjects or from the organization that took the photograph. Our “practice” tip here is, as you work, think about sharing images of the people who make archaeology happen in your presentations in classrooms, public talks, and publications. And, we encourage you, with each new issue, to scroll to the bottom of the screen (Figure: TOC) and have a look.

A new gallery featuring all the past covers of Advances is now live on Cambridge Core.