SEAC Programme goes online

I see that SEAC (La Société Européene pour l’Astronomie dans la Culture) have put the programme of their forthcoming meeting online (in English) at: http://www.archeoastronomy.org/conferences/SEAC2005/Programme2005_1.pdf. It looks fascinating. I’m particularly intrigued by Efrosyni Boutsikas’s paper on Artemis Orthia as I’ve been pondering mightily on Artemis Brauronia.

Sadly I doubt I’ll find out what it is she thinks about Artemis Orthia for quite a while as I won’t be going. I can’t really afford it at the moment. SEAC did offer travel expenses to PG students who were offering papers and that should have been perfect. I have papers in abundance. However it would be impolite for them to pay for me to go to Sardinia and then for me to refuse to publish my paper in their Proceedings. Sadly I’m not at all sure that, if I want my papers to be read by Ancient Historians or Archaeologists, the SEAC proceedings would be a good place to publish.

I’m lucky. Leicester has the full set of SEAC publications. So does Warsaw and, as far as I know – nowhere else in the world. Most major libraries don’t purchase them. There is the possibility of people getting my papers via inter-library loan I suppose, but it’d make far more sense to publish them where they can be seen.

One possible site would be the Journal of Memetics, which isn’t directly Classical or Archaeological, but deals with transmission of ideas, so it’s cognate. One paper I need to finish is on the origin of constellations. If a constellation is a meme, then it’s perfect.

It does mean that I’ll miss out on helpful criticism from a lot of people before I publish, but I’ll just have to rely on the people I circulate the early draft to. —–