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320 Alphabet Soup
seems to have survived only a year or two. A Bulletin of Mediterranean
Archaeology (at its close, based in Cincinnati) also
appeared in the mid-1970s, but again had a very short life.
The Journal of Mediterranean Anthropology and Archaeology
appeared only in 1981, then resurfaced (briefly) a decade later.
The real burst of activity began in the 1980s (especially the
later 1980s) with, for example, the Journal of Mediterranean
Archaeology and Mediterranean Archaeology both first appearing
in 1988: an annus mirabilis that also witnessed the successful
launch of the Journal of Roman Archaeology (JRA), an event of
significance to this inquiry, as shall be seen. Additions continue
right up to the present day, the most recent—Mediterranean
Archaeology & Archaeometry—launched in 2001. Although
many have subsequently undergone editorial changes, or transfers
in publisher, the majority of these undertakings have endured
to the present. It would be intriguing to compare this
record with the survival rate of academic periodicals overall.
How to explain this ‘boom’, however modest? In part, no
doubt, it simply participates in the decided increase of academic
journal numbers, in the humanities and elsewhere, over this
same time span (Figure 13.2). 5 This is not the place fully to
consider political and economic factors behind the development,
but the overall trajectory is clear. The years after World
War II witnessed the beginning of this upsurge (seen in both
book and periodical production), with phenomena from the
G. I. Bill to the baby boom generating growth in the number
of institutions of higher education and in the number of students
attending them. 6 Expansion in the academic publishing
industry has steadily accompanied that trend, an evolution
5 Numbers for the year 2000 represent the average number of titles, 1997–
2001. Data are drawn from N. B. Brown and J. Phillips, ‘Price Indexes for
1981: U.S. Periodicals and Serial Services’, Library Journal 106/13 (1981),
1387–93; K. H. Carpenter and A. W. Alexander, ‘Price Index for U.S.
Periodicals’, Library Journal 116/7 (1991), 52–9; and K. Born and L. Van
Orsdel, ‘Searching for Serials Utopia’, Library Journal 126/7 (2001), 53–8.
I would like to thank Beau D. Case, Field Librarian in the Department of
Classical Studies and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of
Michigan, for his assistance and his advice on matters of journal production
and financing.
6 A. T. Hamlin, The University Library in the United States: Its Origins and
Development (Philadelphia, 1981), 68–83.