As you may have heard, The Post Hole has been selected within the top three for the Best Public Presentation of Archaeology for 2014 in The British Archaeological Awards. Other entries shortlisted alongside The Post Hole are the inspiring Wemyss Caves 4D (Save the Wemyss Ancient Caves Society, The SCAPE Trust and The York Archaeological Trust) and the incredible Channel 4 programme focusing upon the New Secrets of the Terracotta Warriors (Lion Television and MediaLab). The British Archaeological Awards (BAA) is a huge step for The Post Hole, and the winner is announced on 14th July at the British Museum in London (more information can be found at www.archaeologicalawards.org.uk). I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, our readers, for your continuous support throughout the years and also all those involved in the production of the journal from 2008 onwards. Since 2008, The Post Hole has grown from strength to strength, each year developing and expanding readership across not only the UK, but the world! Our largest readership is situated within the UK, followed closely by the United States, Australia and Canada. With over 1,662 website users, 1,173 followers on Twitter and 753 likes on Facebook, awareness of The Post Hole is broadening. With the immediate team based within York, aside from readership and contribution, the journal has obtained members from a number of other high profile universities across the UK; Cambridge, Durham, Southampton, Reading and UCL. If you are interested in joining the team behind The Post Hole, we are still looking for new members and are always eager to share archaeological interest. Please email editor [at] theposthole.org with your details.
To celebrate this exciting news surrounding the BAA 2014 Awards, issue 38 is a special careers feature issue. As you may be aware, each month The Post Hole releases a ‘Digging through the Profession’ interview (to view previous interviews follow https://www.theposthole.org/read/interviews). In celebration, this issue contains some interesting interviews combined within two articles discussing the multidisciplinary aspect of archaeology. Aside from this, Kerrie Hoffman, our Design Editor, created a new Facebook and Twitter banner, and we are planning to release a special feature piece combining interviews with previous team members throughout the summer to celebrate The Post Hole’s successful journey from creation to present day.
Within this issue, there are three interesting interviewes conducted by Alex Cameron. Cameron, combined with Henriette Rødland, conduct our ‘Digging through the Profession’ interviews. A big thank you must go to the Managing Editor, Rianca Vogels, for organising the construction of this popular feature and to the girls for managing to produce an interview for every month. If you would like to be part of this feature, please email editor [at] theposthole.org. Within this issue, Cameron explores professions within archaeology, working as a Finds Liaison Officer for South and West Yorkshire with Amy Downes, interviewing David Roberts who has an interest in current archaeology and landscape surveying, and Jeffrey Fleisher, an African archaeologist and anthropologist.
Taryn Bell, our Submissions Editor, follows on from her thought-provoking article in issue 35, ‘Comment: archaeology needs to be more multidisciplinary’ (at https://www.theposthole.org/read/article/254) with ‘Public perceptions: why do so few students study archaeology?’ Another stimulating and attention-grabbing article, it works well within the special feature careers issue, probing avenues to why so few students study archaeology. As an individual who studied AS and A Level archaeology, I am a key advocator of exploring archaeology at college and university, despite talks of dropping it from the curriculum due to low attendance numbers. It would be interesting to hear some of your thoughts on this; perhaps you could formulate them into a short article for us and send it to submissions [at] theposthole.org.
An exceptional article is written by the 2012-2013 Editor-in-Chief, David Altoft, exploring ‘Integrated Archaeology and the student conference experience’. The article ties nicely in with Bell’s article earlier within the issue, discussing similar themes and using the ASA Conference as an example of how the discipline must expand into different demographics to create further integrated archaeology. For more details on the ASA Conference please follow www.asaconference.org.uk.
As the academic year draws to a close, there is the realisation that this is the penultimate issue before June’s final Issue 39. As always, we rely on your submissions so please keep sending them in to submissions [at] theposthole.org. Don’t forget to regularly check our social media pages as well as the main website for any new updates or individual releases. We hope you enjoy this special feature issue and are as excited as the team to find out the BAA results in July. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
Best wishes,
Emily Taylor
(Editor-in-Chief of The Post Hole - editor [at] theposthole.org)
