With this issue I am pleased to begin my term as Editor of the African Archaeological Review, continuing in the footsteps of founder Nicholas David, David Phillipson, and most recently Fekri Hassan. The journal is now entering its 27th year, and has changed from a single annual issue published by Cambridge University Press to a quarterly published by Springer. Where it was once the single major continent-wide journal in African archaeology, today AAR is one of several excellent publications that span the full history of humanity on the continent. This expansion in journals is a sure sign of the vitality and growing interest in the scope of the discipline and the number of practicing professionals in our field.

Within our intellectual landscape, AAR remains committed to excellence in publishing current research in African archaeology across all time periods and throughout the continent, and including global connections to Africa, in the form of original research articles and reports. This first issue of volume 26 contains two pieces of original research based in Egypt and Ethiopia as well as a slate of book reviews.

I am hoping to accomplish several additional goals which, with your help, will come to fruition over the next 2 to 3 years. First, I very much hope to revive a founding principle of this journal reflected in its title, which is the publication of review essays. Our field has always been one which engages scholars from numerous backgrounds, publishing in multiple languages and venues large and small. As the field continues to grow, this is happening to a greater and greater extent. In this research environment, the value of a review essay has never been more important, and I hope to stay true to the founding goals by providing excellent reviews. Our next issue will feature the first of these, and I invite correspondence about possible future submissions of this type. I have also formalized the role of book reviews in AAR with the establishment of a Book Review Editor. Scott MacEachern has agreed to take on this task for this and forthcoming issues. I invite you to contact Scott with any titles you would like considered for review. I am also excited to announce that we will be publishing a series of interviews with senior Africanist archaeologists, contributing to the intellectual history of our field. AAR is open to special guest-edited issues and double issues; we have two of these in progress in the coming year to year and a half, and welcome ideas for possible future issues. We will also be continuing the Forum feature of the journal as the occasion arises.

We have a newly reconstituted Editorial Advisory Board, whose members have agreed to be active in soliciting manuscripts. I am greatly appreciative of the assistance I have received from them thus far as I undertake the editorship. Please feel free to contact any of the Board members to discuss a submission. I also welcome the opportunity to communicate directly with any prospective contributors to the journal. It has been a pleasure to work with Publishing Editor Teresa Krauss and her assistant Katherine Chabalko at Springer, who are both committed to the health and future of AAR. Along with Scott MacEachern, the Managing Editor Matthew Pawlowicz, and the rest of the production staff at Springer, I am committed to producing four timely issues of AAR per year, and to encouraging the continued growth, accessibility, and intellectual liveliness of the journal. Springer and the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (SAfA) have strengthened their longstanding ties, with Springer providing a book prize and student prize, and space in the journal for SAfA announcements. Springer is also continuing to offer SAfA members a greatly reduced member and student-member price for the journal.

We invite the readership to contribute to this growth and we promise an efficient review and publication process. While most of you reading this are, like me, thinking typically or even primarily of the hardcopy version of the journal you subscribe to and which will continue to come to your mailbox, you may be interested and surprised to learn that those subscriptions are but a small part of our readership. Over 4,000 institutions receive AAR electronically through consortia licenses and subscriptions, which widens our readership to a greater degree than we could ever hope to attain on paper, with thousands of downloaded articles and entire issues per month. We may be defined by our title as a regional journal, but our region is enormous; our modern audience is global and growing. I hope that you will keep that in mind when considering AAR as an outlet for your research and syntheses, as well as when considering the scope of the work you might consider for publication here.

Between our core audience of Africanist archaeologists and the rapid expansion of internet-based publishing, AAR is now truly a global journal featuring the archaeology of the African continent. It is an exciting time to take the reins from those who have brought us to this point.