Publications in the journal focus on understanding the operation, organization, and evolution of human societies.

Contributions from practitioners from fields and sub disciplines that complement the interests of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology readership are commonplace.

Articles may be published from ethnologists, ecologists, sociologists, and evolutionary biologists, in addition to archaeologists.

[2] The data expressed in the journal ranges from early archaeological evidence of human culture to work by contemporary ethnographers.

Elsevier applies the same peer review criterion to articles regardless of the author's publication access decision.