About Advances in Archaeomaterials

Advances in Archaeomaterials

Advances in Archaeomaterials is an English-language, open-access, peer-reviewed journal devoted to archaeomaterials — the scientific study of human-made materials from the past — at the interface of archaeology, materials science and heritage studies. It is published in Beijing by KeAi Communications, with publishing services by Elsevier on behalf of KeAi, and copyright held by its sponsor, the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB). The journal is hosted on ScienceDirect, carries online ISSN 2667-1360, and has been publishing since 2020: its archive runs from Volume 1 in 2020 to Volume 6 in 2025. It is associated with USTB's Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology, and it has been indexed in both Scopus and CAS.

Rationale: a journal for the state of the field

The journal's aims and scope open with an observation about its discipline: archaeological sciences are now more than ever a fully integrated aspect within archaeology itself. Over the past two decades, the journal notes, an enormous wealth of techniques, methodologies, theoretical approaches and regional case studies has been published across the archaeometric sub-disciplines. Advances in Archaeomaterials was created because, in its editors' judgement, the time had come for a journal dedicated to reporting the state of the field of those sub-disciplines. Its signature article is therefore the synthesis: review articles that cover the use of a specific technique or methodology within a class or type of materials, a region, or some combination of the two, reporting on a body of scientific approaches to the materiality of the past. The journal describes itself as the only journal dedicated to that synthesising mission across archaeomaterials as a whole.

What the journal publishes

The journal defines its territory in four parts. First, articles synthesising archaeological science research results for a region — taking stock of what archaeometry has established about the materials of a place and period. Second, articles synthesising research results for a method or technique — assessing what a given analytical approach can and cannot show. Third, articles synthesising research on specific ancient material classes, both organic and inorganic — metals, ceramics, glass, stone, bone, textiles and the many other substances from which past societies made their worlds. Fourth, original research in archaeological science, cultural and industrial heritage, science and technology studies including the history of science, and conservation science — provided, for original research, that it is contextualised within an expanded introductory framework and that its focus is archaeometric research on human-made materials. Its guide for authors lists the contribution types it considers: original research articles, review articles, editorials, book reviews, translations and responses.

Translations and special issues: two distinctive features

Two features of the journal's model are unusual and deliberate. The first is translation: manuscripts of interest to a broad audience that were published in Chinese can be translated into English and published as articles in the journal. China has an exceptionally deep tradition of archaeometallurgy and materials heritage research, much of it published only in Chinese; a standing translation channel makes that scholarship citable and usable by the international field, and fits the journal's Beijing base and USTB sponsorship. The second feature is special issues, which the journal publishes in certain circumstances by arrangement with the editors. Its documented collections include a special issue on the diversity and connections of metallurgy across Asia and beyond, drawing selected papers from the Tenth International Conference on the Beginnings of the Use of Metals and Alloys — the long-running BUMA conference series that is a central meeting point for archaeometallurgists — edited by Pira Venunan and Siran Liu. Conference-linked collections of that kind tie the journal directly into the international research community it serves.

Sponsor: the University of Science and Technology Beijing

The copyright holder and sponsor, the University of Science and Technology Beijing, is a multidisciplinary national university in Haidian District, Beijing, directly under China's Ministry of Education. Its origins trace to China's first mining and metallurgy discipline, founded by the Beiyang Western Academy in 1895, and it was officially established in 1952 from the mining and metallurgy departments of six well-known universities including Tsinghua University and Tianjin University. Known historically as the Beijing Steel and Iron Institute — it took its present name in 1988 — USTB is often called the cradle of steel engineers in China. It was among the first universities selected for the national 211 Project in 1997, and in 2017 it was designated a national Double First-Class university, with four disciplines built as first-class, among them Materials Science and Engineering and the History of Science and Technology. KeAi's own description of the university records some 25,000 students, nearly half of them graduate students, and over 1,800 teaching faculty, with particular research strength in materials science and engineering, metallurgical engineering and mining engineering. A journal about the materials of the past could hardly have a more apt sponsor: USTB's two signature strengths are precisely materials and the history of the technologies that made them.

The home institute: cultural heritage and history of science and technology

Within USTB, the journal is associated with the Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology. The institute describes its spirit as truth-seeking, pragmatism and rigour, and its research programme maps closely onto the journal's scope: the history of metallurgy and materials, the archaeology of crafts, industries and livelihoods, traditional craftsmanship, and the study of science, technology and society. That programme explains the journal's breadth beyond laboratory analysis. Archaeomaterials research, as the institute and the journal practise it, includes reconstructing how ancient crafts were organised, how industries supplied ancient economies, and how traditional craftsmanship carried technical knowledge — questions that require excavation evidence, texts and ethnography alongside microscopy and chemical analysis. The university also counts among its historic firsts the development of China's first electric arc furnace, the housing materials for China's first satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, and the nation's first industrial-size robot — a reminder that at USTB the study of historical materials sits inside an institution that also makes modern ones.

Indexing, record and recognition

For a humanities-adjacent science journal, indexing is the practical measure of arrival, and Advances in Archaeomaterials has passed two significant milestones. KeAi announced that the journal is indexed by Scopus, Elsevier's abstract and citation database — described by KeAi as the largest such database of peer-reviewed literature, spanning scientific journals, books and conference proceedings across science, technology, medicine, social sciences and the arts and humanities — and thanked the editorial team, reviewers and authors who contributed to the journal's success. KeAi separately announced indexing by CAS, the service of the American Chemical Society described as the most authoritative and comprehensive source for chemical information, whose databases are curated by a global team of scientists. Scopus indexing places the journal in the standard discovery and evaluation infrastructure used by universities worldwide; CAS indexing reflects the chemical-analytical core of archaeometric method. An unbroken run from Volume 1 (2020) to Volume 6 (2025) on ScienceDirect gives the journal a citable archive behind those listings.

Publishing model and practice

The journal is open access, so its articles are free to read and download, and it is published through the standard KeAi arrangement: the sponsoring university holds copyright, and Elsevier provides publishing services on behalf of KeAi Communications, the Beijing joint venture of China Science Publishing & Media and Elsevier that publishes more than 280 open-access journals. Submission proceeds entirely online through the journal's homepage, with the system converting files to a single PDF for peer review, and submissions are screened automatically with iThenticate's CrossCheck for overlapping text. Authors submitting to the journal concede the standard undertakings recorded in its guide: that the work is their own, has not been published previously or submitted elsewhere, is approved by all authors and the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and has been conducted following ethical guidelines. On acceptance, authors complete a journal publishing agreement. These are ordinary mechanics, but for a field whose authors include museum scientists, field archaeologists and historians as well as laboratory researchers, a single online system and open-access output materially widen who can publish and who can read.

Place in archaeomaterials research

Advances in Archaeomaterials occupies a specific niche in a growing field. Archaeological science has many technique journals, many regional journals and many heritage journals, but few venues whose primary commission is synthesis across the whole of archaeomaterials — region by region, method by method and material class by material class — supplemented by contextualised original research, book reviews, responses and translations from Chinese. Its USTB base gives it direct access to Chinese archaeometallurgy, one of the field's largest national research communities, while its ScienceDirect distribution, English language and Scopus and CAS indexing address it to the international community. Six volumes in, it has established the basic credentials of a durable specialist journal; its longer-term significance will rest on whether its state-of-the-field reviews become the first citations that researchers new to a technique, a region or a material class learn to consult.