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President’s Statement

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I’m pleased to take this opportunity to tell you about some new and exciting developments with the CAA.

First, let me encourage you to attend the upcoming annual meeting in Calgary. These meetings are our once-a-year get together; the one national meeting of archaeologists from across Canada and often other countries. They are infrequent but important opportunities to meet colleagues, present your own research, get updated on relevant work by others, visit local sites and museums, and generally have a lot of fun. The Calgary organizers have been working for more than a year to host the very best conference, full of interesting sessions and added activities. Please check the conference website on this home page for more details and make your plans to attend and participate in our annual meeting.

As apparent to visitors of the CAA website, we have been in the process of major revisions and upgrades. We have a new webmaster and service provider. We are providing new and improved functionality to the site, making it easier to do things like renew memberships, access current and previous publications, vote in elections, and communicate with your friends and colleagues. The new website will be a work-in-progress for some time, and I ask for your patience, advice and recommendations. We want to make the website the central gathering point for not just CAA members, but also for all others interested in Canadian archaeology. We would like to see blogs and forums from members engaged in research projects; a place to shout about your work, to pose questions, to ask for help. But as the old cliché says, we can’t do this without you. If this is to be your site, reflecting the important things in your society, then we need your help. Send me or any member of the Executive your suggestions, ideas, your vision for what this site can and should be.

 

I am pleased to report that the CAA is launching a new electronic publication. Athabasca University Press has agreed to host a new e-publication that will feature longer documents, often unsuited for refereed journals, including theses, site reports, analytical studies, technical analyses, CRM reports, and so forth. The publication will be on-line only, with full open access and no membership requirement. We have an Editor for the new series (Gabriella Prager; email: gprager@netkaster.ca) and a 14 member Editorial Board drawn from across the country. We are actively soliciting manuscripts for consideration. The series will be refereed and publications will be cited as published by Athabasca University Press. Please consider this new outlet for manuscripts that you would like to see available to a wider audience. There is a great volume of material produced by archaeologists which has previously been confined to the dusty shelves of libraries, but which now can be accessible to the world. Contact Gabriella directly if you have a potential e-publication.

 

There is more news from the CAA, but I will save much of this for my annual report to be delivered at the upcoming meeting in Calgary. Please join me there for what promises to be an exciting annual conference.

And finally, my thanks to the many people who have volunteered their time and energy to keep the business of the CAA moving forward. Unlike the SAA, there are no paid positions in the CAA, and volunteering is the backbone to keeping the society running. Please consider pitching in to assist the CAA. There are too many to thank individually, but allow me to single out the extraordinary contribution of Jean-Luc Pilon, who served for 14 consecutive years as the Editor (and often as translator) for the CAA website. Thanks to everyone who has volunteered their service.

Regards,

Jack Brink
President



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