Introducing Publications Director Taylor McBride

As Taylor McBride approaches her first anniversary as Publications Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology (CIoA), she reflected on the scope of her responsibilities to help in the creation, dissemination, and conservation of archaeological knowledge and heritage, which are the goals of the CIoA. 

“I’m in charge of the production of all of the titles that we publish each year,” she explained. “We do about four to six titles annually, mostly excavation reports, but also subject-based books on archaeology and anthropology,” she added. The CIoA Press publishes books from archaeologists and authors worldwide. She also attends events to market the books, meet with potential authors, and to promote the books published by the CIoA.

The decision of what to publish is made by an editorial board of distinguished faculty and staff, led by Prof. Aaron Burke, and is subject to peer review, McBride noted. “We get several proposals during the year and, as a group, we decide what we would want to publish. My duties are on the production side.” 

However, she noted that they are often looking for titles on regions that are not frequently studied, as well as significant archaeological reports. “One of the most recent books that we’re doing is on a five-year study of a site in Chengdu, China, called Chengdu Plain Archaeological Survey: Results from 2005-2010. It includes a wide range of editors, led by Rowan Flad of Harvard,” she continued. 

“Another one we have nearing completion is A Foraging Nexus: Space, Food, and Magic at Dunefield Midden, South Africa, by Brian Stewart, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. We also have a few books from UCLA’s own Lothar von Falkenhausen and Jo Anne Van Tilburg. Lothar is following up on his popular book Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius (1000-250BC). The new one is called Economic Trends in China During the Age of Confucius: The Archaeological Evidence. I think that anyone interested in Confucianism or economics could pick that up and find it interesting. They wouldn’t necessarily have to be academics or archaeologists,” McBride added. The Chengdu Plain and Foraging Nexus books are expected by the end of this year, with von Falkenhausen’s book early next year.

Before coming to UCLA, McBride was at New York University (NYU) at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, where she was the publications and interpretive manager. As part of her duties, she worked on the exhibitions team, which utilized her museum background. “We did one to two exhibitions a year, and I was in charge of producing the exhibition catalogs. That really is similar to what I am doing at UCLA, following the process of a book from the manuscript to the printed page. 

That includes overseeing the copy editing, proofreading, design, and printing of all the books.

“I also managed the production of interpretive materials such as wall texts; anything that was in the galleries that was explanatory and identifying printed matter. That was really fun.” She was at NYU for a little over two years and worked on three or four exhibitions and two exhibition catalogs. Prior to that she was an assistant editor at Wine Spectator magazine for almost three years, influenced by her time working at a wine store and hands-on experience at a wine harvest in Italy for a month where she actually picked grapes. 

“While I was in college, both in L.A. and New York, I did a lot of internships at many museums. Here in L.A., that included the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood. It is affiliated with the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. I was also at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art. I had experience doing publications work during those internships. Then I gained a lot of production and editing experience at Wine Spectator, and that all culminated in the job at NYU, which is what got me into archaeology,” she explained.

After spending time away, McBride decided she wanted to come “back home” to Los Angeles. “New York was nice for me when I first moved there, but after awhile I just wanted to be outside more.” She had met her UCLA predecessor Randi Danforth when they worked together at an exhibition at the Field Museum in Chicago, for which the exhibition catalog was being published by the CIoA. They kept in touch over the years and McBride reached out to Danforth when McBride saw a listing for her current position at UCLA. 

“There were certain aspects of the job that I had never done before and that would offer me a challenge,” she said, such as speaking with authors and helping to determine “what types of books we would be interested in publishing.”

Working with Cotsen director Jason De León, “we’ve been thinking and discussing ways to make archaeology more accessible within Los Angeles or even on a broader scale. We have a few projects that we have our sights on, as well as the archaeological excavation reports. I think they are really important, and we’re going to keep doing those. At the same time, they are very expensive to buy and produce,” she added. “Most of the time, buyers for these books are limited to libraries because they are hundreds of dollars.

“A lot of people are still kind of stuck in the past where they think that within archaeology, the books are all black and white photos and not very well-produced. I am hoping people will see that these publications can be beautiful, as well as informative. A lot of the images that archaeologists have are actually very striking.”  

Because of her lack of experience in archaeology, she feels she has a beneficial “outsider” perspective on the materials with which she deals. “I think if something doesn’t really make sense to me, I don’t think that we can anticipate that the general public would make sense of it either,” she said. This is often an important idea to communicate to authors who may be used to addressing communities with their same backgrounds, she explained.

A major basketball fan, McBride played when “I was a kid, and it was a big passion of mine. I can’t remember why I quit, but I got back into watching basketball during Covid when they were in the bubble. This is a good city for basketball. I’m actually a Clippers fan sadly, and everyone taunts me at work. But they got me pretty young at my elementary school, Overland Elementary, which is not too far from UCLA.” The team brought jerseys to the school basketball team, then McBride’s mother worked for a company that had box seats to the Clippers games. She adds that she also loves the WNBA and has always been a Sparks fan. 

Lliving in Echo Park, however, she is just below Dodger Stadium. “I can walk to the games when I do go. I live on kind of a steep hill and it is very quiet. But once I go down to Sunset, it is crazy.”

McBride, who is 5’9”, still plays basketball “around town”, but mostly at pick-up games with a group of women in Culver City who meet twice a week. In addition to basketball, she also enjoys hiking and camping and is an avid baker. “I’ve been baking sourdough since about 2018, but I started baking when I was in high school,” she said. 

She had a dog, who unfortunately had to be put down last year, but she is now fostering dogs. Although you can get attached to foster animals, McBride says she likes caring for them and giving them the opportunity to be seen by other people. Her current charge is an “interesting mix,” maybe Husky and Rottweiler, with a dark coat and big blue eyes. She plans on taking the dog camping to see how she does. The previous dog she fostered “had a lot of anxiety issues and was definitely shy. I think fostering her got her adopted a lot quicker than if she had stayed at the shelter because she would probably have been hiding in a corner at the back of the cage.”

She knows that a lot of shelters are at capacity or over right now, so fostering is a really important activity, both for the foster “parent” and the dog.