Michael Lane was Executive and Managing Editor of issue 4 of assemblage. He also designed, marked up, and coded this issue. He has just begun the second year of his PhD research on a social history of writing in the Aegean Bronze Age. (And that's all he's going to tell you about that.) He does what he wants as much as possible, and he doesn't really want to write anything else right now. (As you may have noticed, he's feeling a little disembodied. We'll let him sleep, won't we?)

Assistant Editors
Anna Badcock is the Principal Archaeologist at ARCUS (Archaeological Research & Consultancy at the University of Sheffield) and is a graduate in Archaeology and Prehistory and Landscape Archaeology from the University of Sheffield. Her particular interests are the application of landscape approaches in archaeology. She is currently investigating the development of (later) historic landscapes in the Sheffield region and in the Outer Hebrides (Scotland). She wishes she scored more often during the Friday night departmental football games.

Mark Eccleston just finished his dissertation for the MSc in Archaeomaterials at the University of Sheffield. He is recovering from the week afterward and from his subsequent birthday party. His dissertation is a petrographic study of locally produced ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, where he is involved in field work with the Dakhleh Oasis Project at the site of Ismant el-Kharab (Kellis). In his 'spare time', he helped pull this issue of assemblage together.

Rowan May: The fun pages and assemblage-Info were once more her domain, so if you're not informed or laughing, then you know whom to blame. When not slaving over a hot computer, she likes to watch copious amounts of Babylon 5, Robin of Sherwood, and Sheffield Wednesday FC. She realizes that this makes her sound very sad and like the sort of person you should probably avoid. She is interested in medieval and post-medieval archaeology.

Alexandra Norman: This was my second season with the assemblage crew, with most of my involvement being at the start of the editorial process. I am currently running in a rather dogged fashion, towards the end of a part-time master's programme in archaeology and prehistory, and I hope to continue study. Besides my life as an archaeologist, my activities mostly involve hanging around on cliff faces in Herculean attempts to climb them.

John Tweddle is a Cambridge graduate and third year PhD student studying Holocene landscape change in Holderness, eastern Yorkshire. He tries to make up for the days spent staring vacantly down a microscope in the lab' by running cross country and mountain biking in the Peak District whenever he can.

Emma Wager: Only Emma's surname puts her last. She apparently can't get enough of being 'brow beaten' by fellow students and harassed by authors. She was general editor, with Mel Giles, of issue 3 of assemblage. She is in the second year of her PhD, researching Bronze Age copper mines in Llandudno, North Wales, and she thinks goldfish are great. She would still like to be reborn as a Jedi Knight. Then, perhaps, she could just slice off a few of our limbs when we try to cajole her into further editorial work.

Special thanks
We would like to offer thanks to Dr Barbara Ottaway, Head of the Research School of Archaeology and Archaeological Science, for her steadfast support of assemblage as an important and rewarding collective postgraduate project, even when our work on it, as well as our earnest involvement in departmental policy making, seems to have distracted us temporarily from our research.

We are particularly thankful to Ron Ross who made the mistake of telling us he had some spare time when final proofreading needed to be done. Ron has a PhD from the University of Sheffield and is a project officer with ARCUS. His research interests centre on the later Roman world. He also studies intellectual history, especially manipulation of the past on the Internet.

Kathryn Denning, editor of issue 1, will simply have an on-line shrine dedicated to her for her continuing advice and help.

We are also very grateful to Ben Chan, Jenny Hawcroft, Peter Jordan, and Kate Welham, who let themselves get wrangled into transcribing tape, converting documents, and writing HTML, though they had little or no previous practical experience of such. Finally, we thank Mel Giles, the other editor of assemblage issue 3, who tried to stay away from this issue entirely but let her magnanimity get the best of her good sense and assisted in the interview with Paul Halstead.

assemblage -- the Sheffield University graduate students' electronic journal of archaeology -- is seeking contributions for its fifth issue, due to be published in the spring of 1999. Major submissions should be received this winter, so get moving!

assemblage has a broad archaeological scope and is interested in publishing the work of academicians and other professionals from all parts of the globe. It has a special commitment to publishing the work of postgraduates/graduate students. Such diverse topics as post-processual field methodologies, women and personal possession in sixteenth-century Ireland, the purpose and meaning of British Iron-Age ditches, the analysis of freshwater bivalve remains, and computerised facial reconstruction have been discussed within our pages. Anyone interested in writing for assemblage should read the Notes for Contributors carefully.

assemblage has received widespread critical acclaim and has been given the UCSB Anthropology 'Hot Site' and the InterNIC Academic Guide 'Featured Site' awards. Read what people have to say about it at <http://www.shef.ac.uk/~assem/3/3comment.htm>.

Content
assemblage seeks submissions for the following sections of the journal:

• Research Articles -- Research papers should be well-documented articles of about 3-5000 words defending a thesis -- the stuff that makes up the bulk of most academic journals. These might include original works, versions of conference papers, or chapters from forthcoming books or dissertations.
• Features -- the Features section is designed for pieces somewhat shorter than research papers (2-3000 words) which may include methodological and theoretical essays, critical commentary, investigative journalism, photographs, experimental presentations, and generally material which is more argumentative or imaginative, or both.
• Forum -- Like features, Forum articles are meant to be argumentative and imaginative. However, they may include polemics, diatribes, rants, indictments (within reason), and essays with an overt political character. In forthcoming issues, we hope either to counterpoise these pieces, in order to provide a sort of on-line debate, or to have several dealing with related or complimentary topics.
• State of the 'Arch' -- This section is meant to be like the columns section of most trade magazines. It is reserved for short pieces (less than 2000 words) describing advances in investigation, research, and presentation technologies, such as dating methods, geophysical tests, computer programmes, materials analysis, biomolecular or genetic archaeology, forensic techniques, etc.
• Field Notes -- Have you participated in any fascinating excavations or surveys lately? Have you made any tours or pilgrimages? Do you have a favourite site or part of the world you would like to give more exposure? Then send us a short article or diary snippet for the Field Notes section.
• Reviews -- We're not just looking for book reviews, but also your notes on and opinions about television and radio programmes, CDs-ROM, games, exhibits, and study tours. Did you attended the last International Conference on [Re-]rethinking the Neolithic Yet Again? By all means, write to us about what you thought of it!
• Fun and Games -- Yes, we have a sense of humour about what we do. Please send us good (clean) jokes relevant to archaeology (which haven't been circulating on the Internet for the past 10 years), anecdotes, acrostics, photos for the caption competition, cartoons, etc.

Brief announcements of conferences, seminars, lectures, and exhibits, as well as links to interesting and relevant Internet sites, will be put in the assemblage-Info section. Please also send us comments for the Graffiti section. All e. mail should be addressed to <assemblage@sheffield.ac.uk>.

assemblage (ISSN 1365-3881) is the electronic journal of the postgraduates (graduate students) in the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield. It is produced entirely by the voluntary labour of students during the course of their research, and it makes no profit. The Editorship of assemblage and the composition of the editiorial team change from issue to issue. The journal is currently published twice a year.

All regular post should be sent to assemblage, University of Sheffield, Research School of Archaeology & Archaeological Science, West Court,2 Mappin St., Sheffield S1 4DT, UNITED KINGDOM. E. mail should be directed to <assemblage@sheffield.ac.uk>
Telephone: +0114-222-5102
Facsimile: +0114-272-7347
Wordwide Web: <http://www.shef.ac.uk/~assem/index.html>

Copyright © assemblage 1998