For many archaeologists, October is a month of change, a chance for reflection and progression. The summer is over, and whilst we look fondly back at sunny (and not so sunny) days excavating, surveying and perhaps relaxing, we also look to the future at the challenges and opportunities ahead of us, whether that’s the start of another term at university, the return to the office, or less archaeological pursuits.
October also marks a change for The Post Hole. Last week was the fourth anniversary of its first issue, and my fellow editors and I have spent much of the summer working hard to prepare for a very different fifth year of the journal...
This week sees the exciting relaunch of our website which we hope will make The Post Hole an even more dynamic and interactive experience for our readers. Our new Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages are now integrated with our website to ensure you remain up to date with the latest news and features from us. We hope that you like the changes we’ve made to The Post Hole website and we welcome any suggestions from you for further improvements.
Another substantial change for The Post Hole is the increased availability of our hard copies of issues. We realise that many people prefer to read hard copies of our issues, so to complement the developments in our online presence, we are now printing copies of our issues for archaeology students and staff of the Universities of Cambridge, Durham, Nottingham and Reading, and hopefully others in the near future. We also now have copies of our issues for staff and visitors of the Council for British Archaeology and York Archaeological Trust which are both based in the City of York, our hometown.
We have a lot of other exciting initiatives planned for you over the course of the coming year. We will keep you informed of those via our website and social media pages.
For now, I hope you will enjoy reading this new issue of The Post Hole. Its content is similarly reflective with articles looking back on this summer’s University of York archaeology field school at Boltby Scar hillfort, a community fieldwork project in the Yorkshire village of North Duffield, and if you’re a student, useful advice from York archaeology graduates concerning their experiences of undergraduate life.
Our special feature this month is an interview with director of the Star Carr Project, Professor Nicky Milner. We spoke to her shortly before she went to excavate at the nearby Mesolithic site of Flixton Island this summer. Features about her latest excavation will appear in a future issue, but for now we hope this interview offers you a tantalising look into her research and thoughts about the site she is becoming synonymous with.
Enjoy!
David Altoft (Editor-in-Chief of The Post Hole - david.altoft [at] theposthole.org)
