An early Christmas present from the Society for Medieval Archaeology

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Pictish Stone
Pic­tish Stone. Photo (cc) Pamela Adam. Click on the photo to read her comments.

Good news from the Soci­ety for Medi­eval Archae­ology and the wiz­ards at the Archae­ology Data Ser­vice. The first fifty (50) issues of Medi­eval Archae­ology are avail­able for free online. Its not quite open access, because the issues can’t be archived else­where, but that’s no real prob­lem as long as the ADS stays funded.

The Soci­ety exists to “fur­ther the study of the period from the 5th to the 16th cen­tury A.D. by pub­lish­ing a journal of inter­na­tional stand­ing deal­ing primar­ily with the archae­olo­gical evid­ence, and by other means such as by hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings and arran­ging con­fer­ences.” It’s clear mak­ing the journal freely access­ible is going to do a lot for their work, but even so when you also have to bal­ance the fin­an­cial needs of the Soci­ety it’s still a cour­ageous step in a field where most pub­lic­a­tions are subscription-only.

But the real reason to cel­eb­rate is that the journal is very good. There is plenty of stuff in it that deserves a wide audi­ence. For instance Pic­tish sym­bol stones are a bit of a mys­tery. How­ever I can read about them in the art­icle Invest­ing in Sculp­ture: Power in Early-historic Scot­land by Meg­gen Gondek, which is avail­able as a PDF from Volume 50 of Medi­eval Archae­ology.