HAT has supported many projects which make materials readily available to a wider audience and continues this commitment by awarding a grant of £4200 towards a larger project to digitise back issues of Winchester Studies. These volumes will then be available on line free of charge from Archaeopress. HAT’s grant will enable 4 volumes from the series to made available in this way.
Between 1962 and 1971 Winchester Excavations Committee (WEC) carried out the largest programme of archaeological excavations and historical research ever undertaken in a British city with more than 2000 people digging on its sites. Under Martin Biddle’s leadership a team of innovative professional archaeologists were supported by students from the UK, mainland Europe and the USA as well as by many local people who both worked on the excavations and housed volunteers. For the first time the centre of interest was the city itself, the urban phenomenon and how it waxed and waned over 2000 years from the Iron Age, through Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval times down to the emergence of the modern city in the Victorian period.
The majority of Winchester Studies volumes were published in hard copy form by Oxford University Press and all, but Winchester Studies Volume 9.1 are now out of print, furthermore a number of volumes in the series are also now unobtainable second-hand. Winchester Excavations Committee however hold their digital rights so OUP will have no involvement in the process.
From the Spring of 2020 Archaeopress became the publisher for the remaining Winchester Studies volumes which will in future be available simultaneously in electronically and in print form; as part of this arrangement they have also undertaken to assist with the digital publishing of the volumes published in hard copy form by Oxford University Press.
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Collection/Winchester-Studies
Archaeopress are reproducing the volumes through their Gold Open Access scheme as epdfs that are fully searchable and in the same format as their other Archaeopress Archaeology publications which are available in epdfs and have a wide acceptability and readership. They will therefore be available as a free download.
