Proceedings of the 14th symposium of the international work group for palaeoethnobotany, Kraków 2007

Abstract

This first supplement of Vegetation History and Archaeobotany is the outcome of the 14th symposium of the international work group for palaeoethnobotany (IWGP), held in Krakow (Poland), 17–23 June, 2007. The symposium was organized by Aldona Mueller-Bieniek from the Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Marek Nowak from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University and the Committee on Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, on behalf of the IWGP committee. This is the second time that the symposium has taken place at Krakow; the first time was in 1974, followed by Wilhelmshaven in 1977. Coincidentally the same will happen again, and after Krakow in 2007, the next congress will be held at Wilhelmshaven in 2010. Starting with the double issue vol. 5/1–2 of Vegetation History and Archaeobotany in 1996, after it had been decided by the committee that the journal would be the official organ of the IWGP from then on, every three years a collection of papers presented at the IWGP symposia has been published in regular issues, or double issues. As the number of scientists and subjects of archaeobotany has greatly increased since the beginning of the IWGP meetings—the first one was in Kacina near Prague (Czechoslovakia) on October 14–18, 1968, still under the designation Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Palaoethnobotanik (IAP)—and in parallel with the number of submitted manuscripts, a new way of publishing all these articles has to be found. Due to a limited page budget (although increased by 50% of issues and 20% of pages per issue since 2007 and 2008, respectively) and in order to avoid a huge backlog of regular papers, it was decided to publish the Proceedings not as a regular issue as before but as a supplement which, however, had to be fully subsidized. At Krakow in 2007 more than 200 participants from 38 countries registered, after about 160 at Girona in 2004 from 26 countries—compared to 11 from 5 countries at Kacina in 1968 where 30 colleagues from 13 countries had been invited (Fig. 1). According to our experience with the Girona volume (Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14/4) and the again increased submission rate, it was decided during the meeting in Krakow to distribute all submitted papers equally among the Guest Editor Aldona Mueller-Bieniek, the Associate Editors Corrie C. Bakels, Stefanie Jacomet, Malgorzata Latalowa, Marijke van der Veen, Karl-Ernst Behre, Andrew Fairbairn and George Willcox, and Felix Bittmann, the Editor-in-Chief, who in addition made all the technical improvements. As in normal papers the responsibility can be seen from each single contribution. This editing would not have been possible without the most valuable and critical reviews and comments on the submitted contributions. Therefore special thanks go to all colleagues involved in this task. They did a great job and are acknowledged at the end. Many of them even did multiple reviews. Last, but not least, the great work of our copy/language editors James Greig and John Daniell is highly acknowledged in dealing with the large number of papers in addition to the normal ones. F. Bittmann (&) Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research, Viktoriastr. 26/28, 26382 Wilhelmshaven, Germany e-mail: bittmann@nihk.de