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summaries of archaeological research in the Americas and for a brief period (1973– 1976), the Old World. The section was dropped in 1994 because of space constraints.
The book review section, always important for membership participation and reader interest, includes books from all areas of the world. An important section published annually is the report of the society’s business meeting, including committee reports. Until 1974, this section also included titles of papers given at the annual meeting.
As membership in the SAA has always been dominated by citizens of the United States, articles in American Antiquity have had a strong focus on America north of Mexico, even though there have been occasional complaints from the membership about the number of Mesoamerican articles. Steps to internationalize the journal include publication of a few articles in Spanish in the 1940s, inclusion of translated Russian articles in the early 1960s, institution of an annual review of Old World archaeology in 1978 (discontinued in 1990), and publication of Spanish abstracts for articles beginning in 1989. In the late 1980s, the demand for a journal specifically devoted to Middle and South America was strong enough that the society created Latin American Antiquity, which is available to SAA members at an additional charge. This journal began publication in 1990, and since then, American Antiquity has focused more on articles on archaeology in the United States and Canada and on archaeological method and theory. As foreign membership and subscription increased in the 1970s, particularly in Europe, American Antiquity became the medium by which the state of American archaeology is judged.
The contents of American Antiquity provide a fairly good measure of the interests and theoretical orientations of professional archaeologists in the United States, but the journal does not reflect the work of Americanists in other countries nearly as well. In one study of the journal’s contents for the first fifty years, articles on excavation, material culture, and culture process were found to account for 60 percent or more of the articles until the last half of the 1960s. Since that time, the number of articles devoted to these three areas has declined, and articles on floral and faunal remains and analytical methods have increased to give a more balanced coverage of archaeological topics.
In another study that looks at the trends in articles emphasizing data, method, or theory for the first forty years of the journal, articles emphasizing data consistently made up 60 percent or more of the total published until the term of the last editor in the sample, Edwin N. Wilmsen, when the proportion dropped to one-third. Interestingly, this dramatic shift also occurred at the time when peer review was introduced. Articles on method consistently represented around 20 percent of the articles until the 1960s when they began to increase, reaching 50 percent by the early 1970s. Articles on theory were always 10 percent or less except during the terms of the earliest and latest editors, when they reached 15 percent.
Archival materials relating to American Antiquity are housed in the National Anthropological Archives of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. Materials over ten years old are available to researchers except for confidential files, such as referee comments, which are restricted for fifty years.
The American Journal of Archaeology is the official journal of the archaeological institute of america (AIA). In January 1885, fewer than six years after the formation of that institute, Arthur Lincoln Frothingham, Jr., published the first issue of the American Journal of Archaeology for the Study of the Monuments of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages. The new journal was to be “the official organ of the Archaeological Institute of America,” and its stated goal was “to further the interests for which the Institute was founded.”
Twelve years later, the young periodical, now simply called the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA), marked the inauguration of its second series by placing the institute’s seal on its title page and adopting as its subtitle, “the Journal of the Archaeological Institute of America.” The rationale for the second series was to bring
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