The 1999 Annual General Meeting of the Computer Applications in Archaeology Conference was held at Dublin Castle in Dublin, Ireland on Saturday 17th April 1999.

The meeting started at 14.30 p.m. with N. Ryan in the chair and about 80 members present.

1) Minutes of the last meeting (Saturday 28th March 1998, Barcelona, Spain)

These were accepted.

2) Matters arising from the minutes

Occasional award. Dominic Powlesland clarified his proposal from last year to establish an occasional award for Excellence in the Application of Computer and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. Nominations will be made by members, and the decision to make an award will be made by the Steering Committee. The award will normally include Honorary Life Membership of CAA. After some discussion the steering committee promised to establish criteria for the award and put them for discussion on the CAA web pages. The meeting accepted the motion to establish an occasional award unanimously.

3) Chairman's Report

The chairman reported that the committee had met on two occasions (28th March 1998 in Barcelona and 15th January 1999 in Dublin) and had conducted most of its other business by E-mail.

Because of a shortage of funds caused by the need to purchase copies of two year’s proceedings, a small number of bursaries was given to students and other delegates. In addition to normal CAA bursaries, we record our thanks to the editors of the Archaeological Computing Newsletter for generously funding two 50 pounds bursaries. CAA(UK) was also able to provide support for two students.

The Chairman thanked the organisers of the 1999 CAA conference: Edward Bourke and Muiris de Buitléir from Dúchas, the Heritage Service, Roseanne Meenan and Barry Masterson from the Discovery Programme, Gabriel Cooney from University College Dublin and all their helpers. CAA99 had 207 delegates.

4) Treasurer's Report

CAA has a positive balance of 1860 pounds but has to pay about 5000 pounds for two years of proceedings. There is some outstanding income from the conference in Birmingham, and income from the Dublin conference and from sales of proceedings will redress the balance. The books are almost ready for auditing.

5) Membership Secretary Report

CAA has about 600 members. There is now a separate CAA conference mailing list and a membership list. Changes of address should be send to the membership secretary a.s.a.p.

6) 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.

Juan Barceló will stay an ex-officio member of the Steering Committee as representative of CAA Spain.

The following are ex-officio members of the Steering Committee for 1999-2000:

7) CAA2000

CAA2000 will take place from 18-21 April 2000, in Ljubljana in Slovenia. It will be a joint conference of CAA and the UISPP Commission IV. CAA asked Commission IV to join. Detailed information on: http:///www.zrc-sazu.si/caa. For questions: caa2000@zrc-sazu.si

8) CAA2001

There was one bid for CAA2001, Visby (Sweden). Göran Burenhult presented the University College Gotland in Visby, a young university focused on culture and information technology. There is one computer for every 4 to 5 students. Visby is a beautifully located city with a medieval atmosphere and is on the UNESCO world heritage list. Gotland has lots of archaeology and ample opportunities for excursions. The later in spring the better the weather. Compared with Euroland Sweden is cheap. The best way to travel to Gotland is by plane to Stockholm and by fast boat to Visby. The Steering Committee recommended Burenhult’s bid and the meeting chose Visby unanimously.

9) Publications

Nick presented a proposal from Dave Wheatley for future CAA publications. Taylor and Francis want to publish a yearly thematic issue on addition to the proceedings. CAA has to take 200-300 copies or include the publication in the membership fee. The discussion produced the following objections: too expensive, the organisers will end up with "left over" proceedings, with thematic issues "quantitative methods" will not happen very often. The majority of the meeting voted against the proposal to start a separate CAA series. Two members were in favour.

15.30 p.m. 20 minutes tea break.

CAA96 proceedings. There is disagreement between Kris Lockyear and the Romanian organisers. The state of these proceedings is unclear and so is the location of the money prepaid by the delegates for a copy of the proceedings. There are rumours that the papers are in the hands of Kris and that the book is almost finished. However, the steering committee has not been able to communicate with Kris Lockyear for quite a while. Kris Lockyear changes jobs 1st May so he may have more time to work on the proceedings after that date. The meeting authorizes the steering committee unanimously to ask Kris to hand over the material for the CAA96 proceedings, if he does not produce the volume in the very near future.

Status and quality of the CAA proceedings. There were various comments on the 1997 and 1998 proceedings. Delegates are worried about, among other things, what should go on CD-ROM and the status of the proceedings since there are no strict rules for refereeing. After discussion the meeting was unanimously in favour of paper proceedings with supplementary material in an electronic form (like CD-ROM) where appropriate. The status problem can be solved by letting the local organisers form an international editorial panel of referees. Every paper should be refereed by two referees but the editors can act on the opinion of one referee. The meeting agreed with this proposal with 3 votes against.

Steve Stead proposed to reinstate the pre-paid publications so that CAA can regain financial stability. Nick Ryan pointed out that the costs are difficult to predict beforehand. The meeting agreed to reinstate the earlier principle with one vote against.

10) Any Other Business

Representatives from Iráklion (Crete, Greece) announced that they will come with a bid for CAA2002.

Quantitative Methods should be mentioned more often in the title of conferences, web pages and literature lists.

Delegates would like to have an attendance list with email addresses.

Organisers should bar as much as possible presentations of commercial software in papers, demonstration sessions and posters. At least all the papers should be academic papers.

The meeting closed at 17.13 p.m.