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Frank E. Brown, a U.S. team began to uncover the remains of the Republican colony of Cosa on the coast northwest of Rome, focusing on the temples of the Capitolium, the civic buildings of the Forum, and some private houses. Publications of the excavations have appeared in several volumes of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. The academy donated the site and its museum to Italy in 1981. In Rome itself, the AAR has excavated in the Regia and the Atrium Vestae in the Forum Romanum and, most recently, on the slope of the Palatine Hill.
References
Dyson, S.L. 1998. Ancient Marbles to American Shores: Classical Archaeology in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kopff, E.C. 1996. “American Academy in Rome.” In An Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology, 41–43. Ed. N.T. de Grummond. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Valentine, L., and A. Valentine. 1973. The American Academy in Rome, 1894–1969. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Yegül, F. 1991. Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding: Architecture at the American Academy in Rome, 1894–1940. New York: Oxford University Press.
American Antiquity is the quarterly journal of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), and it includes articles on the archaeology of North and South America and archaeological method and theory worldwide. The SAA was founded in 1934 to promote communication within the professional archaeological community and between professional and avocational archaeologists through various means, including a journal. In 1937, Carl E. Guthe proposed the name American Antiquity for the journal, following the lead of the English journal Antiquity.
All members in the society receive American Antiquity, and funding for its publication comes primarily from dues paid to the society. Prior to 1958, authors paid for some or all of the cost of illustrations. Until 1993, a single nominee for editor was selected for a four-year term (shortened to three years in 1978) by the society’s nominating committee and was “elected” by the membership. Now, as a result of a change in the bylaws, the editor is selected by the SAA executive board and is no longer a voting member of that governing body.
The early editors managed the journal from their institutional office with editorial assistance from spouses, students, and assistant editors representing different geographical areas or archaeological specialties. As the workload increased, associate editors were added for different sections of the journal. In 1989, a full-time managing editor took over many of the production tasks.
Review of articles submitted was in the hands of the editor and the assistant editors until 1969 when peer review of each submission by two people was instituted. The number of reviewers for each manuscript was increased to four in 1989. Prior to peer review, the acceptance rate of article submissions was 65–90 percent, and at times editors were desperate for copy. After peer review began, a change that coincided with a period of tremendous growth in the society, the acceptance rate fell below 50 percent.
The general character of the journal’s contents has remained fairly uniform even though the organization has changed. The principal purpose of the journal from the beginning was to present research articles, and these make up the majority of each issue. Although issue contents are usually determined by what is submitted, occasional special issues are designed with a particular geographic or topical focus. The twenty-fifth and fiftieth anniversaries of the SAA were occasions for special issues of historical interest.
In the early issues, a correspondence section was included to provide a forum for brief comments by amateurs, but as it worked out, professional archaeologists dominated that section along with the others. A facts and comments section was added in 1938. The notes and news section continued the annual archaeological fieldwork summary compiled by the National Research Council’s Committee on State Archaeological Surveys and published in American Anthropologist until 1932. That section, which became current research in 1962, provided up-to-date
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