Editorial

Here it is, issue seven of assemblage - the graduate archaeological journal from Sheffield. After two issues the present editorial team would like to take this opportunity to thank all those contributors and peer reviewers who freely gave their time to make assemblage six and seven possible, their work is greatly appreciated by us and our readers.

Assemblage is a graduate student production and the current editorial team are moving on. When new editors are in place a call for papers will go out and we hope you, our readers and contributors will continue to support this publication.

During the period of our editorship we have streamlined and perhaps sobered the format of assemblage. This was not from some campaign against humour but partly from the need to reduce the time occupied by production, better no jokes than bad ones. However, as the bulk of material on the web has expanded it has perhaps become more important that we prioritize the peer reviewed status of our contributions. These are the product of considerable academic effort and we feel deserve to be presented in an appropriate context.

As assemblage is an online journal we have also made an effort to keep up with the latest standards in web development and online publishing. The current issue has been designed in valid XHTML and with current issues of user accessibility and usability in mind. The font size is slightly smaller and the column size more narrow as, apparently, text that is below 4 inches wide is easier to read for the human eye. Should the font size be too small, click ‘view’ > ‘text size’ or 'text zoom' on your browser menu bar to change the size of the text. We have also implemented Dublin Core metadata for all our papers to improve the searchability and retrievability of assemblage as a resource. Assemblage is also still being archived and is accessible via the Archaeology Data Service.

We hope you enjoy this issue of assemblage.
Tim, Helen and Christiane

The Editors

Tim works part-time for the Peak District National Park Authority and is writing up his PhD research on the Historic landscape and social change in the south west Peak.

Helen is in the third year of of her PhD on the Prehistoric landscapes of Cumbria.

Christiane now works as a technical officer for the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield specialising in the electronic publication of humanities resources.