| Editorial Statement |
Apart from the extracurricular activities commonly accommodated by educational institutions, academic employees increasingly expect junior archaeologists to have
excelled even further. When applying for academic grants
or vacancies, a candidate’s capability to set up and carry
out research that is methodologically solid, innovative,
and societally relevant are considered among the main
criteria. The ability to do so is often tested by the amount
of presented posters or papers at international conferences
and publications during their studies, whilst this is generally not part of the regular curriculum. It seems that the
phrase ‘publish or perish’, heretofore used to stress the
competitive academic environment established researFKHUVÀQGWKHPVHOYHVLQQRZDGD\VEHFRPHVLQFUHDVLQJO\
applicable to junior archaeologists who are just venturing
into the arena.
In the light of these developments, we, a group
of four (former) Research Master students, have worked
out the idea to create a journal that functions as an accessible and stimulating platform, and facilitates students’
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vitae, but would additionally allow the extensive amount
of data annually being produced and analysed by Leiden’s
students to be accessed by the broader archaeological
community. Initial pitching of this idea at both students
and teachers revealed that a faculty journal for the publication of junior research is indeed much desired. The
end-product of almost a year’s work of discussing, creating, calling for papers, writing, reviewing, adapting, and
editing lies before you. The journal is named “INTERSECTION”, symbolizing the wide range of archaeological
discourses being studied and taught at Leiden’s Faculty of
Archaeology.
Aims
Archaeology is an intrinsically multi-disciplinary conduct, investigating the materialization of human activities
in distinct geographic regions and varying time periods
by the application of a wide range of methodologies. Because a single archaeologist is never specialized in all of
these, and research groups are strongly rooted in traditional approaches, looking beyond the imaginary borders
of sub-disciplines may fuel innovative approaches and
lead to surprising insights. As much as the application
of multiple approaches is argued typical for archaeological research, multi-disciplinarity does not necessarily
imply inter-disciplinarity. Because geographic regions
and time periods, and their adjacent methodological and
theoretic approaches can strongly vary, understanding of
past human activities can only be reached in its full extent
through continuous interaction between sub-disciplines.
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and its educational World Archaeology programme being
structured around broader research themes, creates great
potential for doing so. Instead of focusing on a particular
method, region, or time-periods, at INTER-SECTION we
therefore aim to consciously bring together the approaches of individual students in order to stimulate broader
theoretical and methodological discussions, and present
the sub-disciplines of archaeology with alternative approaches.
We do realize that writing an article is a completely different exercise than the common written assignments students are familiar with such as essays, internship
reports, or dissertations, and as such demands a style of
writing which generally remains unpractised by the average student. In order to ensure that students are well guided
in the writing process we rely on the invaluable experience
of the faculty’s teaching staff. Each author is supported by
a ‘referee’, often the teaching supervisor of the course or
thesis an article is based on, who aids by proofreading the
initial drafts and discussing how these can be improved.
The peer-review process is set up in such a way that exterQDOVSHFLDOLVWVLQWKHÀHOGRIUHVHDUFKSURYLGHDGGLWLRQDO
suggestions for improvement. Following the criteria for
publication, authors are stimulated to evaluate the impact
of their own results on a broader scale, which causes their
articles to provide an interesting, interactive, and important read for their archaeological peers. We truly hope that
the joint effort of students, teachers, alumni and external
researchers in the creation of INTER-SECTION, leads to
an increase of the publication of student research in the
future.
Practical Details
INTER-SECTION: Innovative Approaches by Junior Archaeological Researchers is an open-access journal. It is
published twice a year, digitally available online (http://
www.inter-section.nl), a