Digitising away…
My day in archaeology is very dull. It involves the slow process of digitising the drawings of the lithics from the Nepi Survey from 1999 and 2000. This takes time, since the automatic tracing does not do the trick but I have to do it by hand. I also do not have the newest or the best software to do it. I would prefer AutoCad but they do not give licenses to the archaeologists who do not have a salaried job. An affiliation at a University is not enough for them. So my trusty old CorelDraw has to do.
Why is my work so important? This will be my last contribution and the final publication of the Nepi Survey Project I will make. It also shows how long it takes to get the field projects published. It takes the writing, the preparation of illustrations, the submission and the resulting peer review and corrections to get the articles out. And I still have the Remembering the Dead project to publish…
There is certain contradiction in the working of the funding bodies: they happily give funds to new field projects, but it is extremely difficult to find funding for getting old work published. I was lucky in the noughties to get funding to get the Roman pottery worked by a professional find specialist, but you cannot normally get grands to cover your own work. That is why I am now digitising out of duty.
However, I am happy to get this article out. I have found out new things about the use of lithics in the Nepi area and will publish them in due course in the Papers of the British School at Rome. The journal will be go the Diamond Open Access, so neither I nor the reader has to pay anything to publish or read. A win-win situation of which I am very grateful. My old articles in the publication series, the bronze and iron age finds from Il Pizzo (Rajala, 2007), prehistoric pottery (Rajala, 2013) and archaic and orientalizing finds from the Nepi Survey (Rajala, 2016). Together with Mills and Rajala (2011) that published the Roman fabric series for the Nepi survey, are all behind the Cambridge paywall. As an author you may get a copy from me if you need them for your work!
References
Mills, P. and Rajala, U., 2011. The Roman ceramic material from the fieldwalking in the environs of Nepi. Papers of the British School at Rome 79: 147–240.
Rajala, U. (2007) The bronze and iron age finds from Il Pizzo (Nepi, VT): the results of the intensive survey 2000. Papers of the British School at Rome 75: 1–37.
Rajala, U. (2013) The concentration and centralisation of late prehistoric settlement in central Italy: the evidence from the Nepi Survey. Papers of the British School at Rome 81: 1–38.
Rajala, U. (2016) Pre-colonial Latin colonies and the transition to the Middle Republican period: Orientalizing and Archaic settlement evidence from the Nepi Survey. Papers of the British School at Rome 84: 1-72.
