About the Journal

Southern African Field Archaeology (a.k.a. FIELD) in its revived format is a non-profit, open-access journal currently funded by the Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg, and previously by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The journal will publish one volume annually and aims to communicate basic data, findings, syntheses and opinions about all aspects and periods of southern and/or sub-Saharan African archaeology, the palaeo-sciences, and heritage collections and management, to professional archaeologists, heritage practitioners, students, governing authorities and the public. It therefore serves everybody concerned with field and laboratory research, methods development, experimentation, data analysis and the interpretation of the archaeological and palaeo-science records, as well as with collections and heritage management pertaining to the sub-continent.

 

We accommodate a broad range of original contributions in the form of:

  • Peer-reviewed research reports.
  • Concise peer-reviewed comparative studies, syntheses or overviews.
  • Peer-reviewed critiques or discussion pieces around previously published papers in FIELD or elsewhere that are relevant to the themes of the journal.
  • Non-peer-reviewed short notes.
  • Non-peer-reviewed editorials and opinion pieces.

 

Contributions published in the journal are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 International License. Authors therefore retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. Contributions by Africa-based authors are free of charge. For a period of two years (beginning 2023), open-access publication is now free for all authors. Beyond this period, non-Africa-based authors (also those with honorary affiliations at African institutions) will be charged a competitive fee of ~R20 000.00 (~$1370.00 or ~€1150.00) for their open-access publications.

 

FIELD Cover page: Designed by Marlize Lombard and Matt Lotter. The background image provided by Amanda Esterhuysen (Wits University) is a shaded model (2x vertical exaggeration ECW) produced from LiDAR data by Southern Mapping of Molokwane, a BaKwena farming village near Rustenburg, South Africa, inhabited by Sotho-Tswana speaking populations since the 17th century (Pistorius, J.C.C. 1992. Molokwane an Iron Age BaKwena Village: Early Tswana settlement in the western Transvaal. Perskor: Johannesburg).