In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Editors' Corner
  • Deborah Bekken, Laura Lee Junker, and Anne Underhill

We would like to introduce ourselves as the new Editors of Asian Perspectives.

Deborah Bekken earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994. She is a faunal specialist and has worked extensively on Pleistocene assemblages in China. More recently, she has analyzed faunal remains from Neolithic sites (Liangchengzhen) and Shang sites in Shandong Province. Since 2004, she has served as the director of Sponsored Programs at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where she continues various zooarchaeological projects while overseeing externally funded research at this institution.

Laura Lee Junker obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1990, working under Karl Hutterer, who was in turn a student of Wilhelm Solheim, the journal founder, at the University of Hawai'i (we might call this "two degrees of academic separation"!). She taught at Vanderbilt University, Brigham Young University, University of Oklahoma, and Western Michigan University before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois–Chicago in 2000, where she is an associate professor of anthropology, as well as an adjunct curator at the Field Museum. She has carried out archaeological research on protohistoric- and historic-period Philippine maritime trading societies for almost two decades, publishing on such topics as craft production, warfare, ritual feasting, forager-farmer interactions, and political economy.

Anne Underhill received her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1990. She taught at Franklin and Marshall College, McGill University, and Yale University before joining the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum in 1999. She is currently associate curator of Asian anthropology at the Field Museum and adjunct associate professor at the University of Illinois–Chicago and at Northwestern University. In January she will begin serving as chair of the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum. In 1995 she initiated what is now one of the longest Sino–foreign collaborative archaeological field projects in China, conducting 11 seasons of systematic archaeological survey in the Rizhao area of southeastern Shandong and three seasons of excavation at the Longshan Period center of Liangchengzhen.

We have all published our own work in Asian Perspectives and we are very pleased to have the opportunity to work with all our readers and contributors. We all owe Miriam Stark a big thank you for her dedicated and skillful management, under which Asian Perspectives has flourished. We also thank Suzanne Finney, assistant editor under Miriam at the University of Hawai'i, for generously [End Page 1] helping with our first issue. In addition, we thank Joel Bradshaw and Cindy Chun, University of Hawai'i Press, for their patience in guiding us during the transition process. We aim to continue attracting high-quality research papers on the archaeology of the Asian-Pacific region, and we welcome your input. This is the first time that the editorship of Asian Perspectives has been located outside of Hawai'i. We thank you, our authors and readers, for your patience as we transition into the editorship and tackle the complex logistics of running an academic journal. We are pleased to introduce our editorial assistants for this issue from the University of Illinois–Chicago (UIC), Lisa Niziolek and Debra Green.

We plan on initiating a new feature, Editors' Corner, to invite commentary by our readers and occasionally by outside experts. One of our goals is to raise awareness and share information about the looting of ancient sites and the alarming, illegal antiquities market in the Asian-Pacific region. We feel that archaeologists need to be better informed about the problem and speak up in reaction to the well-organized groups who value profit more than cultural heritage. We invite letters on this topic for future issues. At the same time, we are exploring the feasibility of an online discussion section for the Asian Perspectives web site. We also plan to devote sections of more issues to single themes in the near future.

Sincerely,

Deborah Bekken (Field Museum)

Laura Lee Junker (UIC)

Anne Underhill (Field Museum) [End Page 2]

Deborah Bekken
Field Museum
Laura Lee Junker
UIC
Anne Underhill
Field Museum
...

pdf

Share