selected candidates for all of the society’s offices, but only the positions of president, vice-president (dropped in 1958), and council member have had more than one candidate.

The activities of the society were initially run out of the offices of the members of the executive council, but as membership grew, the need for a central office to handle some of the society’s activities became imperative. In 1953, the office of the American Anthropological Association took over membership activities, and in 1973, the society voted to affiliate officially with the AAA. All business of the society was directed out of the AAA office in Washington, D.C., until 1983 when the society hired a part-time executive director to run its business in an independent office. In 1992, a full-time executive director was hired to handle the society’s increasingly complex affairs.

The society’s activities are financed primarily by membership dues and donations, although private and government grants have been received for special projects. Dues in 1935 were $3 per year, but primarily because of increased paper and printing costs and increased society activities, they rose to $6 in 1947, $15 in 1970, $50 in 1984, and $75 in 1990. Expenditures by the society were initially around $1,000 per year, most going toward the cost of the society’s journal american antiquity. By the late 1970s, the society was involved in many more activities, and less than 50 percent of its $100,000 budget went for publication. In 1992, only a third of the $544,000 budget was spent on publications, less than was spent on administration and management.

The principal method by which the executive committee accomplishes its tasks is through a number of standing, advisory, and ad hoc committees. In addition to the standard committees for things such as finance, membership, nominations, and publications, a variety of more specialized committees of varying duration have been created. They range in function from short-ranged ones—like the one in 1949 appointed to investigate whether the spelling of archaeology should be changed (it recommended that the second “a” remain)—to longer-sighted ones such as one on the status of women in archaeology formed in 1974 and the Foundation for American Archaeology incorporated in 1990 to obtain outside funding for public education. By 1990, the society had thirty-three committees and other units, and its organizational chart resembled that of a small country.

Membership in the society has always been open to anyone interested in furthering the objectives of the society. Initially, two categories of membership were established—fellows, the professional archaeologists and avocationals who have conducted archaeological research, and affiliates, which included everyone else—but this stratification was dropped in 1942.

Although Guthe optimistically predicted 1,500 members when the society was formed, it did not reach that level until the 1960s. Initial membership was about 300 individuals and 100 institutions and rose quickly to between 600 and 800 individuals where it stayed until the early 1950s. A moderate growth rate began at that time and picked up in the 1960s. Between 1968 and 1971, the society’s membership doubled to 3,800. Growth peaked around 1980 near 5,000 individual members and then began to drop, not returning to that level again until the late 1980s.

For the first quarter century of the society’s history, avocational archaeologists made up a majority of the membership. With the growth of the profession in the 1960s and 1970s, the balance shifted toward professional archaeologists, and in a sample membership poll taken in 1986, less than 10 percent of the respondents considered themselves avocational archaeologists. Participation of avocationals in the society has always been low relative to their membership numbers. Avocationals have almost never been elected to positions in the society, and although participation in meetings is difficult to gauge, it, too, has probably been low. The principal area of avocational participation has been in publications. The first article in American Antiquity was by Paul F. Titterington, an avocational archaeologist from St. Louis who was a strong advocate for the formation of the society, and by the mid-1950s, about 13 percent of the major articles and 28 percent of the short comments were submitted by avocationals. With the