Editorial - Studia Hercynia 2017 (1)

5 Editorial The year 2016 was marked by the passing away of two important Czech scholars of classical antiquity, Iva Ondřejová and Marie Dufková, both associated with our Institute for many years. Both of them, having actually studied together under Jiří Frel and his then young assistant Jan Bouzek, focussed their attention on the “smaller arts”: jewellery and terracottas, respectively. Whereas Iva Ondřejová became employed by our Institute, Marie Dufková joined the forces of the National Museum in Prague but also taught at the university and remained thus associated with us as well. They collaborated on anumber of projects, especially Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum for the Czech collections and the History of collecting classical antiquities in the Czech lands. Their breadth of knowledge and warm human approach to students and the people around them will sorely be missed. On amore optimistic note, we learned with great pleasure that as of 9/6/2017 our journal Studia Hercynia has been included in the ERIH Plus database (European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences) run by The European Science Foundation (ESF) in collaboration with the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD). It is both an honour but also an obligation to maintain the high standard of the journal. This volume proves further our commitment to publishing not only in English but also in arange of other main languages to maintain the diverse scientific discourse. The first two papers discuss issues linked with Anatolia: the opening paper targets the description of the River Halys by Herodotus (K. Leloux), followed by an insightful new analysis of the early iron metallurgy in coastal Western Anatolia (M. Verčík). The studies section closes with acomplex portrait of our current knowledge on the beginning of early Celtic art and its links with Mediterranean imports to Bohemia (J. Bouzeketal.). Starting with this issue we are also introducing three changes/additions: the new peer- -reviewed section Materialia will include more discretely targeted articles on singular pieces, or groups thereof. The first contribution to this section discusses the Egyptian shabtis in the collection of the ICAR (P.Onderka). We have also decided to move the report on the activities of the ICAR for the past year from issue 2 to issue 1 of agiven year, to align its publication with other similar reports delivered for the faculty but also to have the activities still fresh in memory. Finally, the reports section contains one more innovation: the New Studies in Black Sea and Balkan Archaeology. Over the years this report used to be compiled by Jan Bouzek and was published bi -annually in the journal Eirene. It has been mutually agreed that the annotated report will be from now on included in the Studia Hercynia journal. It will keep its bi -annual rotation but it will be prepared by awhole team of authors now. The activity of our Institute in Uzbekistan has increased in recent years and thus the excavation reports concentrate again mainly on the survey and excavations in the Paskhurt Valley. We are equally pleased to announce that our colleague Ladislav Stančo, who is leading the ICAR research in Uzbekistan, has been awarded aprestigious Neuron Impuls Award, an open grant competition designated to support high quality projects in basic scientific research for promising young scientists working in the Czech Republic. Peter Pavúk Editor -in -chief