Acta Archaeologica

About Acta Archaeologica

DEPTH-169-OCT2026: researched profile — verify figures on the official publisher page.

About Acta Archaeologica

Acta Archaeologica is a peer-reviewed academic journal of archaeology published by Brill (Leiden, the Netherlands). Founded in 1930, it is described by its publisher as the leading scientific international archaeological periodical in Scandinavia, and it carries a Class A rating with endorsement by the European Science Foundation. The journal was published by Wiley-Blackwell until January 2021, when it moved to Brill Publishers — a change of publishing home after nine decades that reflects the consolidation of humanities journals under specialist academic publishers.

The journal's print ISSN is 0065-101X and its online ISSN is 1600-0390 (LCCN 34021573; OCLC 01460830; ISO 4 abbreviation Acta Archaeol.). It publishes full presentations of important new discoveries, archaeological analyses, and general and interdisciplinary studies with an archaeological basis, with its primary focus on Northern European archaeology — including the Baltic countries — up to AD 1500, alongside European and world themes of particular relevance to the archaeology of Northern Europe. Contributions are accepted in English, French, German and Italian, and contributions by young scholars are especially welcomed.

Brill lists the journal's 2024 Impact Factor as 0.4 with a 5-year Impact Factor of 0.6. Recent volumes are preserved in the Portico digital archive, and Brill's online platform shows articles published as recently as May 2026, confirming the journal's active continuation into its 96th volume.

History: Nine Decades of Scandinavian Archaeology

Acta Archaeologica was first published in 1930, in the interwar period when Scandinavian archaeology was establishing itself as a distinct international research tradition. From its inception the journal positioned itself as Scandinavia's flagship archaeological periodical — a claim its publisher still makes nearly a century later — and it has published continuously to the present day, reaching volume 96 in 2025.

The journal's longevity spans the entire modern development of Northern European archaeology: from the culture-historical frameworks of the 1930s, through the processual and post-processual theoretical turns, to today's landscape of scientific archaeology with its ancient-DNA studies, isotope analyses and large-scale excavation databases. Its archive is therefore a primary source for the historiography of the discipline in Northern Europe — a fact reflected in the older editorial policy, which explicitly gave historiography and review articles a defined (if lower-priority) place in the journal.

For most of its modern history the journal was published by Wiley-Blackwell (and before that under the Blackwell imprint), with its editorial office anchored at the University of Copenhagen. The January 2021 move to Brill placed the journal with a publisher whose core strength is in the humanities and area studies — a natural fit for a journal of archaeology, ancient history and cultural heritage. The transition appears to have been seamless for readers: Scopus coverage is recorded as 2000–2020 and 2022–2024 across the publisher change, and Research4Life records Brill coverage from volume 71 (2000) through volume 96:2 (2025).

Editorially, the journal was long associated with Klavs Randsborg, Professor at the SAXO Institute (formerly the Institute of Archaeology), University of Copenhagen, who served as editor and whose editorial address (Njalsgade 80, DK-2300 Copenhagen) was for years the journal's point of contact. The current editor-in-chief is Inga Merkyte, also of the University of Copenhagen, continuing the journal's deep institutional anchoring in Danish archaeology.

Aims and Scope

Brill's official description defines the journal's scope as follows: Acta Archaeologica publishes full presentations of important new discoveries, archaeological analyses, and general and interdisciplinary studies with an archaeological basis. Its primary focus is on Northern European archaeology (including the Baltic countries) up to AD 1500, and on European and world themes of particular interest to the archaeology of Northern Europe. Emphasis throughout is on quality, originality of data, and well-documented and illustrated studies, as well as on methodological issues. Contributions by young scholars are especially welcomed.

An older editorial statement (published via the World Archaeology organization) adds useful detail on the journal's traditional priorities: priority is given to Nordic and North European studies, but contributions from wider European and Mediterranean archaeology (including Classical Antiquity), the Near East, the Arctic, Africa and world archaeology in general are also welcome. Historiography and review articles are given lower priority, while annotated lists of important books appear occasionally. That statement also notes that the editors (and others) act as referees — an editorial-refereeing model traditional in humanities journals, where the editorial board's own expertise carries much of the review burden.

In practice, the journal's published content covers the full chronological span of Northern European prehistory and the medieval period: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Viking Age and medieval archaeology, with the Baltic region explicitly included in the remit. The "up to AD 1500" boundary gives the journal a clear chronological identity — it is fundamentally a journal of prehistory and the Middle Ages, not of historical or industrial archaeology — while the openness to interdisciplinary studies means that archaeometric, environmental and theoretical contributions with an archaeological basis are in scope.

The journal's multilingual policy — English, French, German and Italian — is a deliberate continuation of the European humanities tradition in which major archaeological scholarship was routinely published in several languages. For authors, this means the journal remains one of the few international archaeology journals where a substantial German- or French-language manuscript can still find a top-tier venue.

Editorial Board

The editorial leadership published on Brill's official journal page is:

• Editor-in-Chief: Inga Merkyte, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
• Associate Editors:
  • Søren Albek — Center of World Archaeology, Copenhagen
  • Thomas Roland — The Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces, Copenhagen
  • Jesper Tae Jensen — The Danish Institute for Mediterranean Studies (Diomedes)
• Editorial Board:
  • Peter Breunig — Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
  • Richard Hodges — The American University of Rome (Italy)
  • Harald Meller — Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)
  • Algimantas Merkevičius — Vilnius University (Lithuania)
  • Paul Sinclair — Uppsala University (Sweden)
  • Rune Iversen — Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
  • Mads Kähler Holst (Director) — Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus (Denmark)

The board's composition mirrors the journal's scope: strong Danish and Scandinavian representation (Copenhagen, Uppsala, Aarhus, Moesgaard), Baltic coverage (Vilnius), German prehistory (Frankfurt, Halle), and Mediterranean expertise (Rome, the Danish Institute for Mediterranean Studies). The inclusion of the director of Moesgaard Museum — one of Scandinavia's major archaeological museums — alongside university professors signals the journal's bridge between academic research and museum-based archaeology.

Peer Review Process

Acta Archaeologica is a peer-reviewed journal. The traditional editorial statement notes that the editors (and others) act as referees, which describes a model in which the editor-in-chief, associate editors and editorial board members carry out or directly organise the refereeing of submissions, supplemented by external specialists where needed. This is characteristic of humanities journals, where editorial boards are typically composed of leading active researchers in the journal's exact subject areas.

The journal's published emphasis — on originality of data, full documentation and illustration, and methodological rigour — indicates what referees are asked to assess: not merely the novelty of interpretation, but the quality and completeness of the underlying archaeological evidence and its presentation. The explicit welcome to contributions by young scholars suggests an editorial posture that values new voices, with the review process serving a developmental as well as a gatekeeping function. Authors should note that historiographical essays and review articles, while accepted, are given lower priority than primary presentations of discoveries and analyses.

Languages and Frequency

The journal accepts contributions in English, French, German and Italian — a quadrilingual policy that distinguishes it from the English-only norm of most international journals and that reflects its European humanities identity.

On frequency, sources differ and the discrepancy should be stated openly. The older subscription information describes the journal as an annual; the Editage journal directory likewise lists it as annual. Wikipedia's journal infobox, however, lists it as biannual, and the Research4Life/Brill coverage record shows volume 96 with two issues in 2025 (v. 96:2), which is consistent with two issues per year in recent volumes. The most likely reading is that the journal moved from one to two issues per year at some point in its recent history, but since Brill's own overview page does not state a frequency explicitly, this profile reports the conflict rather than asserting a single figure. Librarians and authors should confirm the current volume structure on Brill's platform.

Indexing and Abstracting

Acta Archaeologica is abstracted and indexed in:

• Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) — Web of Science Core Collection
• Scopus — coverage recorded as 2000–2020 and 2022–2024
• Abstracts in Anthropology
• Academic Search
• Anthropological Index
• Anthropological Literature
• FRANCIS
• UGC CARE (as listed by secondary directories)

Inclusion in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index is the key indexing fact for the journal's core audience: AHCI coverage is what makes the journal's Journal Impact Factor possible and what places it in the Web of Science discovery ecosystem used by humanities researchers worldwide. The journal's full text is preserved in the Portico digital archive, and Brill content is distributed through Research4Life to eligible institutions.

Impact Metrics

Metric values for this journal vary noticeably across sources and snapshot dates, so each figure below is attributed and should be re-verified against the current Journal Citation Reports and SCImago pages:

• Journal Impact Factor: 0.4 (2024) and 0.6 (5-year), as published on Brill's official journal page. A June 2026 Journal Citation Reports snapshot reported by the journalsearches directory gives 0.6.
• SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.53 (2024) per the jrank/SCImago snapshot; an older Resurchify/SCImago snapshot reported 0.115, and Editage's snapshot implies a Q1 SJR ranking in Archaeology — the spread reflects different snapshot years and a journal whose citation base is small enough that single highly-cited papers move the indicators.
• h-index: 15 (jrank snapshot); 16–17 in other aggregator snapshots.
• CiteScore: 1.0 (journalsearches/Scopus 2025 data); 0.7 in the Editage snapshot; SNIP 0.42 (Editage).
• Quartiles: reported anywhere from Q1 to Q4 depending on source, year and category (Archeology in arts & humanities vs. social sciences) — another reason to check the live SCImago page rather than relying on any single snapshot.

For a humanities journal, these modest citation metrics need context: archaeology articles typically accrue citations slowly and over decades (the journal's cited half-life is measured in decades, not years), and much of the journal's influence runs through excavation reports and data publications whose scholarly value is not captured by two-year citation windows. The Class A rating and European Science Foundation endorsement are, for many European archaeologists, more meaningful quality signals than the impact factor.

Access, Subscription and Open Access

Acta Archaeologica is a subscription journal, not open access (as classified by secondary directories). Brill's published subscription rates are:

• Print only: €279 / $310
• Print + online: €296 / $343
• Online only: €238 / $275
• Individual subscriptions: print €78 / $95; online €73 / $90

Orders are placed through Brill's customer services (customerservices@brill.com). Electronic access is included in print subscriptions, and online-only subscriptions are available. The journal's presence in Research4Life extends access to eligible institutions in lower-income countries, and the Portico archive guarantees long-term digital preservation independent of the publisher's platform.

The 2021 Publisher Transition: Wiley-Blackwell to Brill

The journal's move from Wiley-Blackwell to Brill in January 2021 deserves attention because publisher context shapes a journal's future. Under Wiley-Blackwell, Acta Archaeologica sat within one of the world's largest commercial journal portfolios, where archaeology was a small subject area. Under Brill — a Leiden-based publisher whose identity is built on the humanities, area studies and international law — the journal is in a portfolio where archaeology and ancient cultures are core business: Brill's own subject pages group Acta Archaeologica with its wider archaeology and ancient-cultures list. For authors, the practical effects include Brill's standard e-book and journal platform, preservation through Portico (where the journal's ISSNs are registered as preserved content), and distribution via Research4Life, which carries Brill coverage of the journal from volume 71 (2000) to the current volume 96 (2025). The continuity of Scopus coverage across the transition (2000–2020, 2022–2024) indicates that indexing was not disrupted by the change of publisher — an important reassurance, since publisher transitions sometimes create coverage gaps.

The Supplementa Series

Alongside the main journal, Acta Archaeologica has published a Supplementa series of thematic volumes. A representative example is Acta Archaeologica Supplementa X: Nordic World — Prehistory to Medieval Times, edited by Klavs Randsborg, collecting studies on the Viking, Neolithic and Bronze Ages of the Nordic world — from the Migration Period building at Alby, Sweden, to Viking Age farmstead cult practices in Iceland, Danish passage graves, Scandinavian rock art, and links between the Nordic world and regions as distant as Newgrange and the Adriatic. The Supplementa format allows the journal to publish coherent edited collections — conference outputs or Festschrift-style compilations — that would not fit the article format of the main journal, extending its role as a publisher of record for Scandinavian archaeology beyond the periodical itself.

The Journal in the Research Ecosystem

The affiliations of the journal's editors map the institutional ecosystem of Danish and Scandinavian archaeology. The SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen — the former Institute of Archaeology, where both the long-serving former editor Klavs Randsborg and board member Rune Iversen are based — is the journal's historic academic home. The Center of World Archaeology in Copenhagen and the Danish Institute for Mediterranean Studies extend its reach beyond Denmark's borders. The presence of the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces (associate editor Thomas Roland) on the masthead is particularly telling: it links the journal to Denmark's heritage-management and rescue-archaeology sector, the source of much of the country's excavation data. And the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus — one of Scandinavia's great archaeological museums, represented by its director Mads Kähler Holst — connects the journal to museum-based research and public archaeology.

This institutional spread is the journal's structural answer to a perennial challenge in archaeology: the field's most important new data often comes from contract and rescue excavations rather than university research projects, and a journal anchored only in academia can miss it. By seating heritage-agency and museum archaeologists alongside university professors on its editorial team, Acta Archaeologica positions itself to capture the full spectrum of Northern European archaeological work — from development-led excavation reports to theoretically driven synthesis. For prospective authors working in Scandinavian contract archaeology, this is a meaningful signal that the journal welcomes their material.

The Baltic Dimension

One scope element worth highlighting is the journal's explicit inclusion of the Baltic countries in its Northern European remit — a focus reflected on the masthead by board member Algimantas Merkevičius of Vilnius University. Baltic archaeology, with its rich Stone Age, Bronze Age and medieval record and its distinct linguistic and cultural heritage, has historically been less visible in Western European publication venues than Scandinavian archaeology. By naming the Baltic explicitly in its scope and seating Baltic expertise on its board, Acta Archaeologica positions itself as a bridge venue: a place where Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian archaeology reaches the international literature in English, French, German or Italian. For researchers working in the eastern Baltic, this makes the journal one of the most natural homes for work aimed beyond the national literature.

Submission Guidance

Authors considering Acta Archaeologica should weigh the journal's distinctive profile: it is the venue of record for major new discoveries and full analytical presentations in Northern European archaeology, with an editorial board drawn from the region's leading institutions. Manuscripts should be fully documented and illustrated — the journal's stated emphasis — and methodologically explicit. Young scholars are explicitly encouraged to submit. Contributions may be written in English, French, German or Italian. Given the lower priority assigned to historiography and review articles, authors of synthetic or theoretical pieces should frame their submissions around original data or a clear methodological contribution. The authoritative submission instructions are on Brill's journal page (brill.com, journal "acar"), which also carries the latest published articles — Brill's page showed new online publications dated May 2026, confirming active, ongoing publication.