TRAC publications

Publishing the outputs of the conference has been a key component of TRAC since its inception. Initially, publication was channelled solely through the conference proceedings, a collection of 8–12 papers presented at TRAC that year. Although publication of the conference proceedings was initially not met with ‘unanimous enthusiasm’ (Scott 2006: 113), the proceedings became a stalwart of TRAC, providing a tangible result and ‘legacy of each year’s efforts’ (Laurence 2006: 118). The editorial process for each year was run by the organising committee and generally followed a standard procedure (e.g. Platts et al. 2014). Following the conference, presenters were invited to submit papers as abstracts from which the editorial team selected a small number. Once submitted the full papers were scrutinised by the editors and anonymous peer reviewers, edited, resubmitted, and published. Contributions could be submitted from any session and as such the proceedings followed a ‘journal’ type format of broadly related articles (Laurence 2006: 121; Platts et al. 2014: 6), which generally reflected the general concerns and/or key themes of that year’s conference. Over the last 20 years there has been some critique of the TRAC proceedings (e.g. Laurence 1999; Webster 1999; Swift 2007; Revell 2014), with most reviewers favouring papers that ‘include both the consideration of a theoretical premise, and its application to a body of data’ (Revell 2014: 493).

In 2013 TRAC adopted an open access policy and an initiative from the standing committee saw the digitisation of past proceedings. By 2019 all TRAC proceedings were available as open access publications (TRAC 2020a). In 2016, the TRAC Themes in Roman Archaeology was established as the first ‘spin off’ from the existing conference proceedings. In contrast to the proceedings, this series was created to publish volumes that ‘focus on a particular theme, problem, or theoretical perspective’ (Rohl 2017). To date, three volumes have been published by Oxbow Books (González Sánchez and Guglielmi 2017; Parker and McKie 2018; Selsvold and Webb 2020), but the series has recently been discontinued, hopefully to remerge in the future in a different format (K. Crawford pers. comm.). The most recent innovation in TRAC publications has been the launching of the Theoretical Roman Archaeological Journal (or TRAJ). TRAJ was developed as an open access publication to replace the existing proceedings, which were concluded in 2017 following RAC/TRAC in Rome. TRAJ was founded to provide ‘a venue for innovative and interdisciplinary research in the field of Roman Archaeology’, promoting specifically the use of theoretical approaches ‘rather than solely the presentation of archaeological data’ (TRAJ 2020). TRAJ is hosted as an open access publication on the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), alongside the open access TRAC Proceedings (Hanscam and Quiery 2018: 1). The format has followed the ‘journal-style’ proceedings but additionally opened contributions to papers from outside the conference, allowing for more diverse and eclectic content. Today, TRAC publications represent a largely open access and large-scale corpus of literature that reflects diverse theoretical approaches to the Roman world.

A retrospective of introspection

TRAC is unusual for an academic society in terms of being particularly introspective. Although reflection upon publication practices within Roman Archaeology has been undertaken elsewhere (e.g. Terrenato 2002; Bagnall and Heath 2018), the scale of comparable introspection at TRAC is unparalleled. Stemming from the aims outlined by Scott (1993) at the first TRAC, it has become a tradition at significant anniversaries for leading figures from within the organisation to reflect on its successes and failures and ponder ‘where do we go from here?’ Such articles have been published in TRAC proceedings after 10 years (Davies et al. 2001), 15 years (Gardner 2006; Laurence 2006; Scott 2006), 21 years (Scott 2012) and 25 years (Gardner 2016). In addition, the preface of the conference proceedings and the editorials of the recently created TRAJ each usually focus on topics relevant to TRAC and its future at that time. Together these retrospectives provide a history to the development of TRAC and while it is not my intention to summarise each of these articles here, I do want to highlight some key themes that have remained consistent arenas of debate over the last thirty years.

Praxis

The collaboration between university-based research and the practice of archaeology, predominantly through developer-led archaeology, has seen recent success in Roman studies. The Roman Rural Settlement Project has led to important recommendations to how we should improve archaeological practice in Roman studies and beyond to advance research objectives (Fulford and Holbrook 2011; 2018). Despite these important advancements, there has been little understanding of the parallel role of theory and practice in Roman studies. Examining the institutions that TRAC authors originate from can help us, in part, to determine what fields of heritage are dominating advances in archaeological theory. An analysis of the data suggests that most authors (85–90%) were affiliated with a university (Table 2). After those authors who did not state their affiliation (‘unknown’), the remaining institution types were each represented by low numbers. These groups include commercial archaeology companies (i.e. contractors and consultants), museum bodies (including local, regional, and national examples), and heritage bodies, whether national (i.e. Historic England) or local authority representatives. In a minority of cases international organizations were represented including UNESCO. It should be noted that this data reflects only the affiliation that authors are willing to provide. At a University dominant conference, such as TRAC, it is likely that article authors would advance their university affiliation over others. For example, I was working full time in commercial archaeology while undertaking doctoral research but in each instance only used my University affiliation to reflect the source of my research.

A consideration of author institutions over time (Figure 2) reiterates the dominance of university affiliations since the beginning of TRAC, however, it also shows that other institution types, particularly other heritage bodies and museums, were better represented in the early years. The lowest levels of non-university affiliation appear to correlate to a period ten years ago, suggesting there was little improvement in that time. Worryingly, contributions in 2020 were entirely from university affiliated authors, although this was after several years of slow growth in contributions from outside universities (2014–2019).

Figure 2

Institution types of publication authors (per year).

The data also reveals a strong correlation between author institution and conference location. Since the beginning of TRAC thirty years ago, every conference has been held in a university setting. In part this reflects the capabilities of different institutions. University staff have the time and capacity to organise conferences at their institutions, where public gatherings in the commercial sphere tend to centre around community archaeology and satisfying public curiosity. It appears that conference location is an important factor in participation in publication. The ten largest contributing institutions to TRAC articles (Table 3) align closely with the ten most frequent locations of conferences over the last 30 years (Table 4). In each case universities at Durham, Leicester, Newcastle, and London (UCL and Kings College London) top each list.

Collaboration is an under researched avenue in TRAC publications and research. While the conference is a highly collaborative atmosphere, particularly in the creation of sessions, there has been little quantitative analysis of how much research is undertaken individually or as part of a collective. For TRAC publications this facet was analysed by examining whether articles had single or multiple authors (Figure 3). For each year of publication, less than 25% of articles were multi-authored suggesting that the level of collaboration in TRAC publications is low. However, the overall number of multi-authored papers has increased in number since 2010, particularly in the years since the creation of TRAJ. Several recent multi-authored TRAJ articles have been produced from sessions held at the conference and represent the articles with the greatest number of co-authors (Brughmans et al. 2019; Weekes et al. 2019).

Figure 3

Percentage of single and multi-author articles within TRAC publications published per year.

Further research on collaboration at the conference, both in session organisation and paper presenters, will be addressed in a future TRAC session (Garland forthcoming). Preliminary research suggests that while most sessions are the result of collaborative organisation, multi-authored presentations are in the minority. Further action is needed to transfer the collaborative efforts apparent across much of Roman studies into tangible outputs, such as presentations and publications.

Research strands

Traditional bibliometric analysis attempts to understand research strands within publications by evaluating the frequency of words in paper titles, usually presented as a word cloud. Although useful in determining broad trends, this is a coarse technique that does not appreciate subtle differences in research foci or the consideration of changes over time. Consequently, to determine different research strands in TRAC publications keywords were assigned to each article for three major themes; type(s) of theoretical framework, methods utilised, and subjects of research (i.e. type of archaeological material/remains studied). For each theme, two avenues were addressed. Firstly, the frequency of each term used across all TRAC publications, to determine the popularity of specific categories. Secondly, for those terms most frequently used, the frequency per year to explore trends over time. The categorisation process was determined by a detailed examination of each article (see above) including the title, abstract, keywords, and main body of text. Where multiple approaches were utilized (i.e. landscape and identity — Garland 2016) an entry was included for both for that article. Although some characterisations could have been grouped together (i.e. practice and structuration) there was a conscious effort to use terminology portrayed in the article rather than group theoretical approaches based on an assumption of their usage. If no obvious theoretical or methodological approach could be identified then no entry was included.

Theory

Determining the theoretical approaches in TRAC articles was relatively straightforward as this aspect is usually explicitly declared in each article. A consideration of the different theoretical approaches demonstrates, unsurprisingly, the vast diversity of frameworks apparent in TRAC articles (Figure 4). The frequency of terms indicates the dominance of ‘identity’ and ‘landscape’ approaches, as well as a focus on ‘society’, ‘ritual’, and ‘space’. Interestingly, ‘gender’ received the seventh highest usage, tying in overall number with ‘urbanism’ and practice-based approaches. This high number contrasts with limited interest in previous conference sessions on gender (see above) but may reflect the focus of TRAC to address the underrepresentation of this important topic. The focus of the TRAC thematic volumes (frontiers, magic, posthumanism,) were each found in the top 20 of utilised terms, suggesting that focused issues were successful in increasing research into these topics.

Figure 4

Word frequency plot for ‘theory’ key words (inset table – five most frequent categories).

To determine trends in theoretical approaches, the relative frequency of categories used per year was plotted for each term used more than five times in any given year (Figure 5). Several groups of theoretical approaches were apparent in 1999 including ‘practice’, ‘romanization’, ‘space’, and ‘urbanism’. This year saw the publication of two proceedings (Baker et al. 1999; Leslie 1999), one of which was delayed from TRAC 1993, resulting in a disproportionate range of approaches. In some instances, the results appear to suggest correlations between sessions held at the conference and subsequent publications. The large number of papers published on ‘urbanism’ in 2013 reflect the publication of several presentations from a single session on ‘Roman Neighbourhood Relations in Urban Contexts’ (Bokern et al. 2013: ix). In recent years groups of articles resulted from the introduction of the TRAC thematic series. The trends show a rise in articles on ‘identity’ in 2017 (González Sánchez and Guglielmi 2017), ‘magic’ in 2018, (Parker and McKie 2018) and ‘posthumanism’ in 2020 (Selsvold and Webb 2020). Other popular TRAC topics, such as ‘identity’, ‘agency’, and ‘ritual’ are also present but do not appear to relate to a single conference session or year and likely represent a general interest in these topics.

Figure 5

Frequency of ‘theory’ key words used in TRAC publications per year (all terms used more than five times per year are represented).

Method

The number of method categories used suggests a heavy focus on the use of historical texts and epigraphy (Figure 6), but a diverse range of approaches that stretches to the use of statistics. The emphasis on ‘historiography’, used here to critique past archaeological writing rather than historical texts, demonstrates the role of theoretical archaeology to challenge past orthodoxies. The relatively high rank of ‘retrospective’, used here to refer specifically to TRAC retrospective articles (discussed above), confirms the self-reflective nature of TRAC. Encouragingly, scientific approaches such as ‘zooarchaeology’, ‘GIS’, and ‘archaeobotany’, are also predominant methods.

Figure 6

Word frequency plot for ‘method’ key words (inset table – five most frequent categories).

The frequency of method categories per year (Figure 7) was less diverse than for theoretical approaches. Trends in this data demonstrate a focus on ‘epigraphy’, ‘history’, and ‘historiography’ in earlier years (1995, 1999, 2000) and a focus on ‘retrospection’ in 2006 at TRACs 15th anniversary (Gardner 2006; Laurence 2006; Scott 2006). Promisingly, the range of methodological approaches in 2017, representing both the last TRAC Proceedings and the first TRAC Thematic volume, suggest that TRAC authors represent a variety of specialisms, combined under a common aim to utilise theoretical approaches to understand the Roman world.

Figure 7

Frequency of ‘method’ key words used in publications per year (all terms used more than twice per year are represented).

Subject

The term ‘subject’ in this instance refers to the topic examined in each research article, specifically the archaeological material or remains studied. Examining the frequency of each term (Figure 8) demonstrates that popular subjects include ‘burial’, ‘architecture’, ‘artefacts’, and the ‘military’. The phrase ‘preface’, the 5^th most popular term, relates to the introduction chapters or editorials included in each of the TRAC publications. Figure 10 also demonstrates the variety of subject matters in TRAC publications with a large proportion (approximately 40% of all categories) represented in a single article.

Figure 8

Word frequency plot for ‘subject’ key words (inset table – five most frequent categories).

In considering the occurrence of subjects over time, the following figure displays little evidence for dramatic changes over time, but that popular subjects, such as ‘architecture’ or the ‘military’, reoccur from one year to the next (Figure 9). The predominance of certain terms, such as ‘architecture’ in the 1999 proceedings, can be related to specific sessions at TRAC 1998, as three of the total six related to architecture in some way. The range of subject terms in 2017, as seen with methods, likely represent the publication of two volumes in a single year.

Figure 9

Frequency of ‘subject’ key words used in publications per year (all terms used more than three times per year are represented).

Internationalism

Determining the levels of internationalism in TRAC publications has been analysed in two ways; the location of case studies used within articles and the location of authors based on their stated institutions. Case study location from TRAC articles acts here as a proxy for the geographic focus of theoretical Roman studies. For the purposes of this research, past locales were translated into modern countries to plot case study locations using modern mapping. Unsurprisingly, the location of most research case studies falls within or immediately surrounding the extent of the Roman Empire. In only one instance was this not the case: Irvin’s (2017) comparative analysis of Gallic and American societies reaction to the political organisation of the Roman Empire. The following figure (Figure 10) provides a density map of case study locations, demonstrating the dominant use of case studies based in the UK, Italy, or France. UK case study locations vastly outweigh other locations, while the vast majority are isolated to just five different countries (Table 5). On a positive note, it is encouraging to see that TRAC articles have included case study locations for most locations across modern Europe and northern Africa, although with a limited focus on Eastern Europe.

Figure 10

Density map article case study location.

Examining the use of case study locations over time, we see a general trend of greater diversification throughout the lifetime of TRAC (Figure 11).⁵ Focusing specifically on those years that followed a TRAC conference held outside the UK (2009, 2010, 2013, and 2017) there is both a greater diversification of case study locations and a larger percentage of locations from outside of the UK. This increase in diversity may demonstrate the success of European conferences at encouraging wider participation of European academics in the conference and the following proceedings. Despite these positive trends, since 2018, approximately 40–50% of case study locations from TRAC articles are UK based. This trend may reflect a change in publication type, with the first two TRAC Theme series originating from sessions held at UK based conferences (Gonzalez Sanchez and Guglielmi 2017: vii; Parker and McKie 2018: 1), and TRAJ, thus far, only published in years following UK based conferences.

Figure 11

Location of case study locations for TRAC articles per year.

The location of author institutions also shows a heavy bias towards the UK. It should be noted that the location of author institution does not determine the nationality of the authors themselves but serves here as a metric to determine whether TRAC is reaching and involving institutions beyond the UK. A breakdown of article numbers per institution country, with the UK split into its component countries (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) demonstrates the dominance of authors from English institutions in the publication of TRAC articles (Table 6).

This bias is unsurprising given the limited number of conferences that have been held in the UK but outside of England (Glasgow — 1993, 2001; Edinburgh — 2018; 3 out of 26). If we consider the location of author institutions per year, the data demonstrate the dominance of UK based institutions since TRAC’s inception, but also encouragingly a growing trend of author institutions that are based outside the UK (Figure 12). This trend is starkly apparent in 2013 and 2017, the years following international conferences (Frankfurt and Rome respectively) and supports the notion that conferences held outside the UK strongly encourage international participation.

Figure 12

Author institution location per year (UK and rest of World).

Britannia

Britannia is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal produced by the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Britannia is composed of research articles, shorter papers, book reviews, and an annual summary of new archaeological discoveries within Roman Britain (The Roman Society 2020). Although focused primarily on the archaeology and history of Roman Britain, the journal also includes ‘kindred studies’, namely related subject matters including ‘the Late pre-Roman Iron Age, the post-Roman period, other provinces of the Roman Empire’ (The Roman Society 2020). A recent editorial review of the journal coinciding with its 50^th anniversary demonstrated an imbalance in authorship, characterised by a depressed number of contributions from female and early-career researchers and those from outside universities (Eckardt 2019). In response, the journal’s editorial board are encouraging contributions from under-represented groups and for editorial members from outside university settings (Eckardt 2019: 8). This comparative analysis included the contents of the journal available online (2012–2019). Although the composition of the journal may not be directly comparable to TRAC publications, all articles have been included as they accurately reflect the contents of the journal, while the number of articles (n = 407) provides a broadly comparable dataset.

Although not ideal (discussed above), the word frequency from Britannia article titles act here as a proxy for the research themes from the journal (Figure 13a). The word frequency unsurprisingly demonstrates a preoccupation with the Roman period, however, the frequency of remaining topics is evenly distributed with some focus towards ‘museums’, ‘burial’, ‘ritual’, and ‘settlement’. Contributions overwhelmingly come from UK-based institutions with very small numbers from Europe, North America, and Australia (Figure 13b). This UK weighting, comparable to TRAC publications (Figure 12), is expected given the focus of the journal on Roman Britain. The frequency of author institutions is also dominated by UK universities (Figure 13c), in agreement with research by Eckardt (2019: 4–5) and is also comparable to TRAC (Figure 2). Collaborative authorship in Britannia appears low (Figure 13d), even in comparison to TRAC (Figure 4), but appears to be increasing over time, with the highest proportion in the latest issue (2019).

Figure 13

Britannia journal summary plot (a: word frequency from article titles, b: institution country top ten, c: author institution top ten, d: single vs multi-author over time).

The frequency comparison plot between Britannia and TRAC publications (Figure 14) demonstrates the high concurrence rate of terms comparable to each publication type, such as ‘Roman’, ‘Britain’, and ‘archaeology’. In terms of subject matter ‘landscape’, ‘burials’, ‘glass’, and ‘towns’ also have a high concurrence between publications, suggesting similar subject matters. In contrast, terms that are frequent in TRAC publications but low in Britannia are ‘social’, ‘identity’, ‘cultural’, and ‘colonial’, relating specifically to theoretically driven research. Whilst terms frequently used in Britannia are geographical (‘London’, ‘England’, ‘Scotland’), likely reflecting the annual summaries of archaeological discoveries.

Figure 14

Frequency comparison plot of words used in article title – TRAC and Britannia (Note: words located above the red line are found more frequently in Britannia, compared to words located below that are more frequently found in TRAC publications).

Journal of Social Archaeology

The Journal of Social Archaeology is a peer reviewed academic journal, publishing research articles across three issues a year. Unlike Britannia, JSA is not affiliated with a specific academic society but is theoretically focused and interdisciplinary in nature, engaging with related disciplines including ‘feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism, social geography, literary theory, politics, anthropology, cognitive studies and behavioural science’ (Journal of Social Archaeology 2020). The journal was founded in 2001 by its editor, Professor Lynn Meskell from the University of Pennsylvania (recently Stanford University). There is also a UK based editor and an extensive editorial board encompassing scholars from across the world. From its inception the journal aimed to ‘explore the relations of archaeology to the humanities and social sciences’, break down the divide between North American and European archaeologies, and ‘advocate innovative modes of writing [and] presentation’ (Journal of Social Archaeology 2001: 10–11). This comparative analysis included the contents of the journal available online (2003 to present) and provides a comparable dataset in article numbers (n = 303).

The word frequency of JSA articles confirms its focus on ‘archaeology’ and ‘heritage’, as well as theoretical foci, including ‘social’, ‘cultural’, and ‘indigenous’ concerns (Figure 15a). Contributions are dominated by Western countries including the USA, UK (where the editors are based), Australia, and Canada (Figure 15b), in contrast to the European focus of TRAC. Again, author institutions are dominated by universities, including Stanford, where its founding editor was based until recently. Interestingly the highest frequency of author institutions includes two universities from South Africa and one from Canada, demonstrating the international reach of JSA (Figure 15c). Finally, collaborative authorship is mostly low, with most issues containing less than a quarter of multi-author papers (Figure 15d). However, like TRAC, collaboration does appear to be on the increase. JSA issues published in 2018 and 2020 contained 50% or more articles produced by more than one author, a much higher rate than seen either in TRAC or Britannia.

Figure 15

Journal of Social Archaeology summary plot (a – word frequency from article titles, b – institution country top ten, c – author institution top ten, d – single vs multi-author over time).

The direct comparison between JSA and TRAC (Figure 16) shows a high concurrence rate of terms relating to theoretical driven research such as ‘archaeology’, ‘social’, ‘material’, ‘process’, ‘society’, and ‘colonialism’. Frequent terms in TRAC publications that remain low in JSA relate to the focus on the Roman World (‘Roman’, ‘Empire’) as well as Britain. However, terms such as ‘London’ and ‘England’ are frequent for JSA, potentially demonstrating a split in the use of terminology between the UK and USA. The subject of research differentiates between publications as well. In TRAC, material-based research is predominant, including terms such as ‘glass’, ‘pottery’, and ‘coins’, while frequent terms in JSA and not in TRAC include ‘political’ and ‘museum’, suggesting differences in the focus of theoretical research.

Figure 16

Frequency comparison plot of words used in article title – TRAC and Journal of Social Archaeology.

Comparing TRAC

On a broad level, TRAC compares favourably to related societies and journals. This limited comparison demonstrates that associated publications face similar dilemmas in attracting participation from outside universities and from beyond their ‘home’ country. In these terms, TRAC is ahead of the game by acknowledging these issues early and taking action to see improvement. Furthermore, while it appears that TRAC shares similar research foci with both Britannia and JSA, there are some differences in approach, with TRAC favouring both a theoretical basis and a material-based subject matter. Beyond these broad level comparisons, it is currently difficult to isolate more complex theoretical connections or divisions, either within TRAC (i.e. Gardner 2016: 1–3) or to related publications. From the bibliometric data collected it is possible to detect that several authors have published articles in both TRAC publications and one or both journals discussed above and these direct connections may have had a demonstrable effect on the development of TRAC. Anthony Sinclair’s (2016) wide-ranging analysis of archaeological research outputs demonstrates the effectiveness of citation analysis for understanding networks of communication between authors and across disciplines. Through understanding co-citation practices, defined as detecting groupings within research based on the similarity of sources cited, we could better understand the development of theoretical trends in TRAC research over time and how this development falls within broader trends in Roman studies and archaeological theory. Moreover, understanding citation practices are important in detecting inequality in gender and race (e.g. Victor and Beaudry 1992; Beaudry and White 1994; Hutson 2002), which is an important step in decolonising Roman archaeology (Kamash 2019). The current inability to undertake a citation analysis of TRAC publications stems from its exclusion from bibliometric databases and this should be a future priority for the organisation.