becoming the central social, and to some degree intellectual, base for the emerging discipline. By the 1990s, its annual meetings, held in January, had more than 1,000 attendees, and its quarterly journal, Historical Archaeology, and substantial Newsletter had gained international standing and distribution. Although fundamentally a scholarly association, the SHA has also served as an effective lobbying base, as is seen by its primary role in the passage of the 1987 Abandoned Shipwreck Act by the U.S. Congress.

Phenomenal growth has resulted in a 2,000 individual membership, which makes the SHA the second-largest association of anthropological archaeologists in the world. Nevertheless, these numbers have not created an economy of scale. Across its three-decade history, a small number of dedicated volunteers have preserved and nurtured the society. The terms of office of the journal editor, Ronald L. Michael (1978– 2001), the recent book review editor, Roderick Sprague (1977–1997), secretary-treasurer, Stephanie H. Rodeffer (1978–2001), and newsletter editor, Norman Barka (1982–2001) highlight this unusual situation for a mature and national-international organization.

Even though the core of its membership is in North America, the SHA has always been international in its orientation. In 1967, scholars from canada and mexico joined their colleagues from the United States at the Dallas meeting, and during the 1960s and 1970s, the society built early linkages to both the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology in Europe and the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology in Oceania. The SHA is the only truly global organization in the field; it is also one of the few of these collateral associations to self-reflexively recognize its own disciplinary history. In 1981, it created the j. c. harrington medal in historical archaeology and followed that in 1989 with the Carol V. Ruppé Distinguished Service Award and in 1998 with the John L. Cotter Award. It also established the flexible and successful category of SHA awards of merit.

The Society for Historical Archaeology, and parallel organizations in North America (including the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology, long associated with the SHA; the Society for Industrial Archaeology; the Council for Northeastern Historical Archaeology; and the former [1960–1982] Conference on Historic Site Archaeology) and similar scholarly associations overseas, have been pivotal in the history and growth of the discipline.

Robert L. Schuyler

See also

Africa, South Historical; Australia, Historical; Caribbean; United States of America, Prehistoric Archaeology

Society of Antiquaries of London

The Society of Antiquaries of London, founded in 1707, is the oldest learned society in Great Britain and Ireland concerned with archaeology and history. The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries, with such scholars as william camden, Sir Robert Cotton, and John Stow, disbanded in the reign of James I (van Norden 1946). The Royal Society, founded in 1660, had an early interest in historical monuments such as avebury (Ucko et al. 1991) and published much material on archaeological finds in its Philosophical Transactions, but by the end of the eighteenth century, its attention was focused purely on science.

The Society of Antiquaries of London was founded by three friends—Humfrey Wanley, John Talman, and John Bagford—who met informally in various London taverns. At the time, people who were interested in the physical and documentary evidence of the past were called antiquaries. The society has a continuous history from 1717, when there were twenty-three members, and the first Articles of Association defined the purpose of the new society as making knowledge of British antiquities more universal (Evans 1956). The Society of Antiquaries of London’s early Minutes recorded the discoveries and exhibits of members, often with drawings, and are still of great interest. The drawings by the director, Charles Frederick, of the Arreton Downs hoard on the Isle of Wight, found in 1734, has made it possible for a group of Bronze Age metalwork items, now widely dispersed, to be reconstituted by later scholars and given their true provenance (Needham 1986).

The first secretary after 1717, william stukeley, made important discoveries at Stonehenge,