MAG Bulletin: 21 January 2002

In order to keep the membership of MAG informed of the groups' activities the committee intends to produce a regular MAG Bulletin, it is hoped that this will occur at least bi-annually.

New Committee

At the Group AGM held at Wessex Archaeology in October 2001a new Group Committee was elected.

All correspondence should normally be addressed through the secretary.

Membership

In the past the group has benefited from corresponding with many of the UK's professional archaeologists. It is intended that this will continue but with one important change. The IFA rules for groups exclude non-members of the IFA from being members of one of its special interest groups. In order to comply with this, but still attempt to include as many relevant people as is possible we have decided to split the group into two categories. Full members: are members of the IFA, will be invited to MAG Seminars, be kept informed of MAG activities and asked to participate in the group's administration. Associate members: are not members of the IFA, will receive all of the above with the exception of not being invited to participate in the groups administration. Given that it costs very little to join the IFA at its lowest level it makes sense to join the Institute and fully participate in the group. Details are available at http://www.archaeologists.net/join.html or IFA, University of Reading, 2 Earley Gate, PO Box 239, Reading, RG6 6AU.

Membership Correspondence

Communicating with the membership has in the past proved to be a time consuming process. In an attempt to simplify this much time has been invested in discovering members email addresses so that the majority of correspondence can be conducted electronically, makes this task much easier. In addition Rory Quinn has kindly offered to post details of seminars etc on both sea-site and Ireland's Network for Underwater Archaeology. If you use email but receive MAG correspondence through the post please let us known your email address.

MAG's aims and objectives

Much of MAG's archive has been lost since its inception and we no longer appear to have a copy of its constitution. In order that we all understand what the group is about we have drawn up a draft of the groups' aims and objectives that shows what the committee feels the groups focus should be and how they intend to carry this out (see below). Any comments that members may wish to make on this, or how they wish to see the group operating are more than welcome. The intention is to present a constitution at the next AGM. If anyone has any part of the MAG archive out there please let us know.

MAG Website

To publicise the group, its aims and objects, activities and to provide a means of widening access to information about maritime archaeology a group website is currently under construction. It is hoped that this will be launched prior to the IFA Conference Seminar in March.

Links with the ALGAO Maritime Committee

MAG is in discussions with the ALGAO Maritime Committee concerning an initiative to provide wider access to information about the management of maritime archaeology.

IFA Paper No 3 'The marine archaeological resource'

Ian Oxley and Dave O'Regan are to be congratulated on the complication of the above, which has involved several years of hard work. The IFA have published the paper electronically and MAG has agreed to regularly maintain it to keep it up to date. The paper is available in pdf format at http://www.archaeologists.net/pubs/maritime_resource.pdf.

IFA Conference

The IFA conference, 25 - 27 March 2002 at the University of Leicester includes a session on maritime archaeology entitled 'From cliff top to seabed - a seamless approach to coastal archaeology?' The session is being organised jointly by Martin Dean of the ADU and Rob Woodside of the National Trust.

MAG diving practices guidance

The group has a long-term commitment to produce guidance for archaeologists on diving practices. It is intended that the group will produce guidance notes aimed at the implication of appointing diving contractors for non-diving archaeologists in the next year.

Bank Account

The treasurer has spent considerable time and effort attempting to trace the MAG bank account. This has been unsuccessful to date. If anyone has any information that may help relocate the account and any money, please contact the treasurer.