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324 Alphabet Soup
Spanish, and Italian) are welcomed, but almost invariably appear
in the minority. The Journal of Mediterranean Anthropology
and Archaeology is represented in library listings as ‘in
English, some French and German’; Mediterranean Archaeology
explicitly accepts submissions in English, French, German,
and Italian, but only some five per cent of its articles (to
date) are not composed in English. Yet other journals are, by
policy, English-only, such as the Journal of Mediterranean
Archaeology or the US-based version of Mediterranean Studies.
Not surprisingly, the location of editors and of press appears
directly to affect the stand taken on this issue. Maltese publications,
for example, tend on the whole to be more catholic. The
Journal of Mediterranean Studies has published occasionally in
Maltese itself; the short-lived Mediterranean Studies printed
article summaries in French and Arabic—the latter a practice
that the Journal of Mediterranean Studies hopes to revive (see
below). Arabic-language contributions or abstracts, it should be
noted, are otherwise almost completely lacking in these Mediterranean
journals. Abstracts in Greek are provided in the most
recent arrival, Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry
from the University of the Aegean on Rhodes. This very selfconsciously
international journal will, however, only take articles
in English, and in good English at that, as pointed out in
the ‘Notes and Instructions for Contributors’ promulgated on
its website: ‘Manuscripts must be written in English, and
should be checked by a native speaker for spelling and grammar
if possible.’ Mediterranean serials, at least in this particular
dimension, seem rather to demand connectivity than to celebrate
local cultural difference.
4. agoodcover
What face do these journals show to the world? How do they
represent ‘the Mediterranean’? Some periodicals don’t even try:
Mediterranean Studies (from the United States) and the Journal
of Mediterranean Studies employ a chaste plain dark blue cover,
the Journal of Mediterranean Anthropology and Archaeology
presented itself in simple light blue. Mediterranean Archaeology
fronts a purple shell on a white background; the shell is clearly
metonymic for the products of the sea, while the purple could