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CAA2003
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Minutes The 2003 Annual General Meeting was held on Friday 11th April
2003 in the Wappensaal in the Rathaus, Vienna, Austria. The
meeting started at 17.02 p.m. with Nick Ryan in the chair and about 60 members
present. 1) Minutes of the 2002 Annual General Meeting held on Friday 5th
April 2002 at Hotel Atlantis, Heraklion, Crete, Greece. These
were accepted. 2)
Matters arising from the minutes. The
proceedings of CAA99 (Dublin) will be published this year. Kelly Fennema and
Hans Kamermans are acting as editors. So far they have received about 20
contributions which have been forwarded to the reviewers. 3)
Chairman's report. The
chairman reported that the committee had met on two occasions (5th
April 2002 in Heraklion, Crete, Greece and 20th and 21st
November 2002 in Vienna, Austria) and had conducted most of its other business
by E‑mail. The
chairman reported the first meeting of CAAPortugal and the establishment of
CAAIndia. Both chapters will have a representative in the CAA steering
committee. The
CAA2002 proceedings are almost finished. A flyer, available at the 2003
conference gave the content. Participants of the Heraklion conference who paid
for the volume will receive a copy by mail. Others interested can order a copy
either from the Greek Ministry of Culture or from CAA (see website). CAA
donated a near complete set of CAA proceedings (17 volumes) to the
Archaeological Museum in Prague to help them to restore their collection after
the devastating flood of last year. We will send more in the near future. 4)
Treasurer's report. CAA
has € 7500 in the Dutch account and 7500 pounds in the UK. The UK account owes
4500 pounds to a creditor. CAA
spent € 25.300
for 53 bursaries
for the conference. 5)
Election of officers and auditor. Since
CAA is registered in Leiden in the Netherlands the auditing of the books falls
under Dutch law. CAA is a vereniging (Society) so no external
auditors are required. The chairman asked members who wishes to volunteer to
audit the books to contact the secretary. The
chairman stressed the point that the steering committee members are not
appointed for life and welcomes candidates. Chair:
Nick Ryan was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed. Treasurer:
Stephen Stead was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed. Secretary:
Hans Kamermans was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected unopposed. Membership
Secretary: Kelly Fennema was nominated, agreed to stand and was re-elected
unopposed. The
following are ex-officio members of the Steering Committee for 2003-2004: Ortolf
Harl and Wolfgang Börner (CAA2003 organiser) 6)
Membership. All
the participants who have paid, or had it paid for them (bursaries), the CAA
membership fee (part of the conference fee) are members of CAA until the end of
following year’s AGM. This fee is used for bursaries. As
soon as the CAA2003 organisers will have handed over the list of paying
participants the CAA membership list will be up-to-date. 7)
CAA2004. Franco
Niccolucci (CAAIt) gave an update of the CAA2004 conference. The organisation is
on schedule. He emphasized not wait until the last minute to register. There
will be accommodation for 500 persons but cheap accommodation near the
conference venue is scarce. There will be an early call for papers and an early
registration deadline. Presentations will be restricted to 15 minutes in order
to have more time for discussion. Prato can be reached by plane via Florence or
Pisa. The website www.caa2004.org will be
available from May 2003 onwards. A flyer was available at the conference. In
contrast to what is mentioned in the flyer it will not be the 31st
CAA conference but the 32nd. 8)
CAA2005 There
is no bid for CAA2005. There are several expressions of interest (Portugal,
Poland, Serbia and the UK) but so far none has led to a formal bid. Portugal
would like to organise a CAA conference in 2006 together with the UISPP meeting
in September in Lisbon in order to increase contact between “computer
archaeologists” and other archaeologists. Such a set-up will unite two
different audiences. There are various problems (accommodation and finance) with
organising a CAA conference in the Spring of 2005 in Tomar. The
Archaeological Museum in Poznan, Poland is interested in hosting a CAA
conference in a future year. The problems here are also of a financial nature.
Furthermore the potential organiser Andrzej Prinke has problems with the large
number of participants (in Vienna around 500) and the fact that so far there is
no cooperation between the possible Polish partners to organise such a
conference. He can let CAA know within two weeks if a CAA2005 in Poznan is
possible. Serbia
(Nenad Tasic) wants the University of Belgrade with a commercial company to
organise a future CAA conference in Belgrade. Belgrade is easy to reach from
Southern and Eastern Europe. He can host more than 500 people and offer
interesting excursions. David
Arnold from Brighton in the United Kingdom can easily organise a major
international conference as CAA in the Spring of 2005. The
steering committee asked the members present for a reaction on the various
proposals. Portugal. Various
members liked the idea of going to Portugal and the EAA conference in Lisbon in
September 2000 was praised, but the conference being in September was for most
delegates unacceptable. September is a month for either fieldwork or teaching.
Furthermore the conference would clash with other conferences during that same
period. The period between the CAA conferences would be out of sync for two
years and this could create problems with generating papers. Some members
worried about the scale of the conference if the two conferences are joined. A
solution could be to have a CAA2006 conference in the Spring and organise a CAA
Portugal or a CAA International session at the UISPP conference. Poland. There
was little discussion about a possible CAA2005 conference in Poland. Everybody
seems to be in favour of this possibility and is anxious to hear about the
possibilities in two weeks time. Serbia. There
was considerable interest in going to Serbia. CAA would reach a new audience and
it would help to put computer applications and quantitative methods on the map
in that region of Europe. It was however suggested that Serbia should first
organise a local or regional CAA meeting in order to gain some experience with a
conference on this topic and to create a local organisation.
UK. The
expression of interest by Brighton for CAA2005 could offer an excellent
possibility to give the other potential organisers more time. However Brighton
University has no tradition in computer applications and quantitative methods in
Archaeology. The
steering committee asked the meeting to give them permission to negotiate with
the potential organisers and promised to keep the membership informed. As a
period of two years has become too short to organise a CAA conference on the
current scale the steering committee will include future conferences in their
negotiations. They will put a bid for the conference in 2006 to the vote in
Prato in 2004. Some
delegates asked for more involvement of the membership in the negotiations
either by email or by way of an electronic vote (Tyler Bell offered help in this
matter) but the majority of the meeting had full confidence in the committee. A
motion to empower the steering committee to decide for a venue for 2005 was
accepted with 38 votes in favour, 6 against and 8 abstentions. The committee
promised to keep the membership informed by email and via the web site. 9)
Any other business. Torsten
Madsen raised the question of the price of the proceedings: € 100 (or with
discount € 90) for the CAA2001 proceedings is a lot of money. The fact that
for the first time in history the steering committee did not sell any
proceedings during the conference illustrates his remark. This point triggered a
discussion about the publication of the proceedings in general. What do we want
the proceedings to be? Should it be a reflection of the conference or a refereed
book of academic standard? A stricter refereeing of the contributions could
result in a slimmer and less expensive volume. According to some members there
are cheaper ways to publish than in BAR. Do we need a paper version or is
publication on a CD or on the Internet sufficient? The proceedings should be
available at low costs to students. The
chairman pointed out that the publication of the proceedings is the
responsibility of the local organisers. The steering committee has written
guidelines for organisers which give recommendations about subjects like
refereeing and accepting papers, but these guidelines are not always followed.
There has been a discussion in the past on this matter and Dave Wheatley
prepared a motion with a proposal from the steering committee to reform the
proceedings (see minutes AGM CAA98 and CAA99). This motion was rejected by the
AGM. So do we want tighter guidelines? Steve
Bullas proposed to form a subcommittee from the membership to look into this
matter and come up with proposals for a solution. A motion, accepted
unanimously, authorised the steering committee to appoint a subcommittee. The
members of the subcommittee will be ex-officio members of the CAA steering
committee. The members are: Steve
Bullas The
chairman thanked the CAA2003 organisers Ortolf Harl and Wolfgang Börner and
their staff for the excellent and successful conference, the biggest ever so far
(around 500 participants (377 paying participants) from 53 countries). The
meeting closed at 18.40 p.m. Hans
Kamermans |
