Every even-numbered year, the Yearbook/or Traditional Music usually focuses on papers reflecting the themes of the previous year's World Conference. This leaves the Yearbook in odd-numbered years open to contributions on any subject matter. However, this also means that having entire issues on a particular theme must be a fairly rare event; our ability to publish general contributions must not be severely limited. This year, however, presents an elegant solution to this dilemma: the combination of general articles plus those focussed on a particular theme.Previous Yearbooks have also occasionally had sections of articles or entire issues devoted to particular themes. In the past two decades, these have addressed such subjects as musical instruments and metaphor (2005), dance (2001, 1991), globalization (1999), and improvisation (1987). Collaboration with appropriate editors or co-editors has also been an essential ingredient.This year a special section concerns music archaeology, edited by the chair of the ICTM Study Group for Music Archaeology, Arnd Adje Both. The six papers presented here reveal some of the fascinating work being done in this subject, informed by many different disciplines, and requiring special considerations. The materials presented here are the result of an ongoing conversation Adje and I began in August 2007, as explained in his preface. It has been a great experience collaborating with someone so enthusiastic, knowledgeable, dedicated, and attentive to essential details. I hope the result is at least somewhat similar to what he envisioned over two years ago.Aside from the exciting subject matter, I am also hopeful that this special section will encourage other interested individuals to explore with me special sections for future Yearbooks. ICTM Study Groups work in various ways, through informal get-togethers, business meetings, and conferences. Reports of such activities often appear in the Bulletin, but some groups produce their own publications resulting from conferences or specially compiled as festschrifts; other study groups, however, may not be able to publish any of their papers as a group. But such special sections need not be limited to the activities of study groups. A themed group of papers can be organized by anyone. I hope that the structure ofthe present Yearbook will stimulate further ideas and thus better serve the needs of our members.The remaining five articles in the Yearbook were general submissions considering new aspects of otherwise fairly well-known traditions, exploring changing issues of identity through music and dance, seeking possible religious interpretations of instrumental traditions, and surveying the massive output of writings on music in one part ofAsia. This variety ofsubject matters, geographical focuses, and approaches reflects the wonderfully diverse interests of our membership, contributors, and readers. In spite of this diversity, one of my jobs as general editor is to try to ensure some amount of stylistic consistency among all the papers. One el...