The 1998 Annual General Meeting of the Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference was held at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona, Spain on Saturday 28th March 1998.

The meeting started at 11.05 a.m. with N. Ryan in the chair and about 120 members present.

1) Minutes of the last meeting (Saturday 12th April 1997, Birmingham)

These were accepted.

2) Matters arising from the minutes

No matters arose from the minutes of 1997.

3) Chairman's Report

The chairman reported that the committee had met on three occasions (13th April 1997 in Birmingham, 10th October 1997 in London and 12th December 1997 in Barcelona) and had conducted most of its other business by E-mail.

A number of bursaries were given to students and other delegates. This year there were three types of bursaries: Bursaries with CAAUK money from the Southampton meeting, bursaries with money from the Archaeology Computing Newsletter and the normal CAA bursaries.

The Chairman thanked the organisers of the 1998 CAA conference: Juan Barceló and Asuncio Vila and their helpers. CAA98 had 325 delegates! The biggest CAA conference ever.

4) Treasurer's Report

CAA has a positive balance of 1640 pounds. The books will be ready for auditing at the end of the year.

5) Elections

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.

Sue Laflin, Vince Gaffney and Martijn van Leusen (CAA97 organisers) were thanked as ex-officio members although they will stay in function until the publication of the proceedings.

The following are ex-officio members of the Steering Committee for 1998-99:

Students & low income

Assaad Seif was nominated, agreed to stand and elected unopposed

Auditor

Since the books are (almost) auditable, Gina Martlew will be asked to be auditor.

6) Proceedings

The proceedings of 1996 and 1997 both will appear in the very near future (this year). The Birmingham proceedings probably first.

7) CAA99

The conference will take place in Dublin castle. There is enough accommodation available in the vicinity (hotels and youth hostels). After the pubs close there will be a bar open in one of the hotels. The trip will be to the Boyne valley and the monastery Glendalough.

8) CAA2000

There were two excellent bids for CAA2000, Visby (Sweden) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). Nick Ryan explained that the International Steering Committee feels that both places are equally suitable for organising a CAA conference, and therefore the committee does not have a preference. Nick asked the university that would not be chosen to submit a bid again next year.

Göran Burenhult presented the Gotland College of Higher Education (GCHE) in Visby as a young university focused on culture and information technology, with many international contacts. Zoran Stancic talked about the role of Slovenia as a cultural bridge between West, Central and East Europe, and the way this influenced archaeological science in Ljubljana.

The majority of the meeting preferred Ljubljana in Slovenia as the venue for CAA2000.

9) Any Other Business

Dave Wheatley proposed a motion on future CAA publications. An option is to create a series of (thematic) CAA publications.

29 delegates were in favour and 11 against. Dave Wheatley was appointed as provisional series editor (36 for, none against) and will prepare a text for an institutional change to be decided upon next year.

Dominic Powlesland proposed the establishment of an occasional award. After some discussion a motion was accepted that the International Steering Committee will come with a proposal with formalised criteria and procedures to be presented at the next AGM.

Dominic asked archaeologists from academic institutions to investigate the possibilities to find EU money for the training of people from field units in the use of computers and quantitative methods. In seminars of two days unit members should be trained by local specialists and specialists from abroad.

Ian Johnson introduced the establishment of VISTA, the Virtual Institute for Spatial Technologies in Archaeology (http://www.archaeology.usyd.edu.au/VISTA).

The meeting closed at 12.20 a.m..