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Alphabet Soup 325
be said to lend an authoritative touch. In contrast to these
simplicities stands the cover of Mediterranean Archaeology &
Archaeometry, where a palimpsest of images—time-worn columns,
a pyramid, the Sphinx, an apparently magnified view of a
scientific specimen (a petrographic thin section perhaps?), and
the subtle tracings of a map—are combined within a single,
busy collage. For its part, Mediterranean Prehistory Online
superimposes a steatopygous figure atop a stone axe and a pot.
The more frequent response to the challenge of selecting an
appropriate image, however, is to give primacy to some form of
map. ‘Old’ maps are clearly preferred: representations that
summon up the Mediterranean, the notion of human construction
of that world, and a sense of the passage of time—all
without inviting debate on the tensions of present-day borders,
not to mention the vexed question of just how to delimit the
‘Mediterranean’ itself geographically. Scripta Mediterranea and
Mediterraneo Antico thus boast medieval or early modern depictions,
while the Mediterranean Historical Review chose an
even older, classically derived mapping, with Europa and Asia
(both inscribed) encircling the unnamed inland sea. A predictable
blue background was later replaced by a green one.
Probably the most radical design makeover, and the most
ambitious cover, belongs to the Journal of Mediterranean
Archaeology. This journal too originally started with a map—a
rudimentary, unlabelled outline drawing of the Mediterranean
(on an orange background), with a small man-in-boat motif
added to one side. The little boat remains in the redesign, but
the journal’s ambit is now expressed by a vivid satellite image
from NASA, described by the editors as ‘a very attractive, intriguing
and symbolically appropriate image’. 10 This totalizing
view of the sea and of its hinterland forcibly seizes upon the
notion of the entire Mediterranean as focus, even as its precise
boundaries are left ambiguous. For those who might quibble
that such a perspective ignores the actuality of past human
experience of the Mediterranean (this is a view, needless to say,
that would never have been seen in Antiquity), one could either
point to the little man in the boat or say—‘It’s only a cover’.
10 A. B. Knapp and J. F. Cherry, ‘Editorial Comment’, Journal of Mediterranean
Archaeology 7 (1994), 3.