About this issue

Welcome to the first issue of the Journal of Kentucky Archaeology, a new venture in online publishing.

Several years ago, our colleagues (and Editorial Board members) Berle Clay and Andrew Bradbury proposed the creation of this kind of online journal. For many years, the Kentucky Heritage Council (KHC) has performed a very valuable service in hosting an annual Archaeology Conference and publishing a volume of proceedings. Both the volumes and the conference have enriched the available library of information about Kentucky archaeology immeasurably. However, Berle and Andrew saw the need for an outlet for contributed papers that, for whatever reason, were not shared through the KHC’s conference.

This idea knocked around the community for several years, but commitments of resources and time were an obstacle. Now, with four archaeologists working through Murray State University, we thought that we could form the core of an editorial team. A number of colleagues agreed to join an editorial board (see About the Journal), and the idea gained momentum.

There are two sets of reasons to try this in an online format. One is that the cost of paper publication, requiring subscriptions, postage and sales and resultant handling logistics, is alleviated. The other is that we can take advantage of the flexibility of the world wide web format, and can include traditional papers as might be printed on paper or through .pdf formats, plus other formats: Powerpoint, audio, video, interactive graphics, live hyperlinks, etc. We are in the early stages of learning how to incorporate these formats into a web design, but we see a bright potential.

It seems fitting that the first issue be devoted to honoring the career of R. Berle Clay, long-term head of Kentucky’s Office of State Archaeology, following an influential half-century of involvement in the field. Three of the papers were presented at the symposium “Pots, Political Complexity, and Remote Sensing: Papers in Honor of R. Berle Clay's Contributions to Southeastern Archaeology,” at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, 28 October 2010, organized by Richard L. Herndon and Andrew P. Bradbury. Berle Clay’s own paper in this issue was an added contribution in keeping with the theme. We are particularly pleased that Nomi Greber contributed her paper as a Powerpoint, the first to take advantage of our call for non-traditional publication formats. All papers were reviewed in house by the core editorial board and may be considered Tier II peer-reviewed (again, see About the Journal).

Please consider this a call for papers for upcoming issues. Please send us comments, for publication or not, papers, reports, book reviews, or other types of works we haven’t thought of yet but which would be of interest to scholars, students, and supporters of Kentucky archaeology. We would like to publish two issues per year, but the volume of publication depends on the volume of contributions.

Thank you for looking at our inaugural issue, and thanks to Berle, Andrew, Randall, Rich and Nomi for launching Number 1.

—Kit W. Wesler, Corresponding Editor

Contributors to this issue:

Andrew P. Bradbury, Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., Lexington, Kentucky 40508

R. Berle Clay, Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., Lexington, Kentucky 40508

D. Randall Cooper, Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., Lexington, Kentucky 40508

Nomi B. Greber, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Richard L. Herndon, Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., Lexington, Kentucky 40508

Kit W. Wesler, Department of Geosciences, Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky 42071