We are happy to present the second issue of the Journal of Kentucky Archaeology. It bodes well that we were able to attract papers beyond Volume 1(1). We believe that the Journal is a needed outlet for Kentucky archaeology, one that will disseminate information and be a home for publishing projects that are data-heavy and perhaps not viable for a major regional or national journal. Submissions for Volume 2(1) are open and eagerly awaited.

This issue includes a paper by Berle Clay about historic architecture, reminding us that buildings are artifacts, too. Tim Parsons provides a substantial account of archaeology and history at Civil War Fort Heiman in Calloway County. Lara Homsey cajoled two colleagues (Tony Ortmann and Kit Wesler) into contributing to a paper describing service learning at the college level, which is the kind of thing that most of us in academia do but do not think about giving a trendy label. Thanks to editorial board members Darlene Applegate and Kelli Carmean for their reviews of the manuscript.

We have already stepped into the minefield of controversy, with David Pollack and colleagues’ commentary on Bradbury et al.’s paper from Volume 1(1), and Bradbury et al.’s response. We had not expected to face this situation quite so quickly. The Corresponding Editor (Wesler, and I’ll use the first person for the rest of this paragraph) consulted with other editors and editorial policies about how to handle this. The editors uniformly find handling critical commentaries the most difficult part of the job, and have varying policies. Taking what seems to be the most usual practice, I will review comments as they are submitted, mostly for substance and collegial tone, and if it seems advisable I will check my opinion with an Associate Editor. If we accept the comment, we will do so with minimal editorial interference. I will then send the comment to the commentees (I think I made up that word) and ask them if they would like to respond. If so, I will receive their response and evaluate it by the same criteria as the comment—collegiality and substance. The commentees’ response will not be shared with the commenters, because to do so could set up a back-and-forth that could take, potentially, forever. Both comment and response then will be included in the next issue, or, if no response, then only the comment. In the case of this issue, I thank both sets of authors for substantive, thoughtful, and collegial papers, each of which makes a contribution to Kentucky archaeology on its own. This discussion will not settle the issue of different classifications aimed at different purposes—which goes at least back to Spaulding, Ford, Brew, Evans and others in the 1950s in such august publications as American Anthropologist and American Antiquity—but it is indeed useful to continue thinking about issues that many of us tend to take for granted.

—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

A. Gwynn Henderson, Kentucky Archaeological Survey, Lexington, Kentucky 40506

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

Lara K. Homsey, Department of Geosciences, Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky 42071

Donald A. Miller, Gray & Pape, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Timothy A. Parsons, Southeast Archeological Center, National Park Service, Tallahassee, Florida 32310

David Pollack, Kentucky Archaeological Survey, Lexington, Kentucky 40506

C. Martin Raymer, Kentucky Archaeological Survey, Lexington, Kentucky 40506

Jimmy A. Railey, SWCA Environmental Consultants, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87109

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