Patrick V. Kirch
This is the inaugural issue of "Berkeley Archaeology," a newsletter
published by the Archaeological Research Facility on behalf of the scholarly
community of archaeologists at the University of California at Berkeley.
Besieged as we all are these days with seemingly endless paper, one might
reasonably ask, why another newsletter? First off, the archaeological community
at Berkeley spans a number of departments and research units, including
the Anthropology,
Art History, Classics,
Geography, History, and Near Eastern
Studies departments in Letters and
Science, as well as the Hearst
Museum of Anthropology, and The Center for Slavic Studies. Faculty collaborating
on archaeological research projects are also found in Soil Science, Integrative
Biology, Geology, and
Molecular Biology, as well as at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory. With such a dispersed group, the ARF
serves an important function of providing a forum where all faculty and
students with interests in archaeological research can periodically meet
to share ideas, results, and concerns; the Newsletter will help us to better
serve this function.
In addition to providing a vehicle for sharing information among members
of the Berkeley archaeological community, we intend that this Newsletter
will also keep our associates, colleagues, and friends who reside elsewhere
informed about our projects and activities. We are especially interested
in using the Newsletter to maintain ties with our former students-both undergraduates
and graduates-many of whom we know continue to share an interest in what
we are doing here at Cal.
At Berkeley the field of archaeology encompasses a diversity of approaches-ranging
from classical archaeology to paleoanthropology-and our geographic scope
is worldwide. Current excavations or surveys being carried out by ARF faculty
members include sites throughout the Mediterranean, in France and Bulgaria,
in China, on several islands of the Pacific, in North America, in Mexico,
Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia. Berkeley archaeology faculty constitute an
internationally-recognized group of scholars, including several members
of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, among other honors. Conveying timely reports on the work of these
distinguished archaeologists to the scholarly world at large is one aim
of our new Newsletter.
Initially, we intend to produce two Newsletter issues per year, in the spring
and fall. We urge all members of the Berkeley archaeological community to
submit reports of research, news releases, information on new publications
or conferences, and other materials for publication. We also welcome any
suggestions for improvements to its contents or format. I look forward to
hearing from you.