Minutes of the meeting in: Salisbury, England, April 1-3, 1993

Participants:

Dominique Guillot, Ministère de la Culture, France Henrik Jarl Hansen, National Museum of Denmark, Denmark Roger Leech, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England Judith Marsh, Department of Communications, Canada Irina Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, Informatics Center for Cultural Memory, Romania Steve Stead, Consultant, PAVEPRIME, England Neil Beagrie, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England

The second meeting of the working group took place at the Salisbury offices of the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments (England) from Thursday, April 1 to Saturday, April 3 with excursions to Dartmoor, Southampton and the Salisbury Plains.

The meeting began with approval of the minutes with the following correction: The next meeting of the group will coincide with the CIDOC meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 10-16, 1993.

Matters arising from the previous minutes:

Minutes will be circulated directly to the membership by the secretary. Roger Leech gave a report on his participation in the archaeological documentation work of the group of archaeological specialists appointed by the Council of Europe's Cultural Heritage Committee. The archaeological specialists met in England in February and prepared two proposals (that were accepted by the Council of Europe on April 2 as part of its European Plan for Archaeology): C.O.E. should prepare a multilingual (French/English) glossary focusing on Bronze age archaeological sites as part of a campaign to raise awareness of archaeology.

Data standards approved for architecture should be modified, as necessary, for archaeology.

The group agreed that Roger Leech, as Chairman, should send formal letters to the Council of Europe and other groups, such as ICOMOS and the Getty Trust, with whom this group wishes to formally liaise. In addition, the Chairman will prepare letters of invitation to others countries who may wish to participate in the group. Steve Stead will coordinate the mailing list. The Royal Commission will provide addresses for all countries for which details are available through the British Council. Dominique will attempt to provide addresses for French speaking countries. Steve Stead will attempt to identify addresses for South America, Australia and Africa.

Irina will attempt to identify Eastern European contacts. The following timetable will be adhered to: Roger Leech will draft the letter before the end of May.

All addresses should be sent to Steve Stead (in ASCII format if possible) by the end of June for compilation.

Steve Stead will distribute copies of the questionnaire and the letter of invitation when he compiles the mailing list. When the mailing list is complete, he will circulate a copy to Roger Leech and Judy Marsh.

Following a short discussion on the business arising from the minutes, the group adjourned to the Southampton office of the RCHM(E) for a tour of the facilities. The meeting was reconvened in the late afternoon, with each member of the group giving a short presentation on documentation work in their respective countries.

The next agenda item was to have been the commencement of work on the glossary. It was decided that, without having the results of the questionnaire, this work would be premature. Two drafts of the questionnaire had been prepared by Irina Oberlander and Jack Foster. The group agreed to compare the two drafts and formulate one final version. Following several hours of discussion, punctuated by a field trip to Dartmoor, a final version was agreed upon. Judy Marsh was asked to draft the final version of the questionnaire before the end of April and to fax it to Steve Stead. Dominique will translate the questionnaire into French. It was agreed that the questionnaire should be sent out by July.

Discussion followed concerning the ability of all members to attend meetings. It was noted that some participants might be more able to attend if they were given formal invitations. Roger Leech will draft a letter to all current members of the group, inviting them to attend the next meeting in Slovenia.

Roger Leech gave a short report on a Council of Europe meeting which he attended on April 2, 1993. Roger presented a document from the Council of Europe entitled "A Core Data Index to Monuments, Sites and Ensembles of the European Heritage". The group reviewed the document in great detail, attempting to determine if the document could be modified to better reflect archaeological documentation. After several hours of discussion, it was decided that the document was very much oriented toward architecture and could not be adequately modified to reflect archaeology. It was agreed that the document should be returned to the Council of Europe with the title modified to read "A Core Data Index to Architectural Monuments, Sites and Ensembles of the European Heritage". An archaeological core data standard will be developed by the working group after the results of the questionnaire have been compiled.

As a result of the above discussions, the group also decided that Steve Stead should proceed with the development of a proposed conceptual model for the documenting of archaeological sites. This model will be distributed to all members of the working group. In addition, Henrik Hansen will produce a first draft of some definitions of archaeological core data. This will also be circulated to all members of the working group.

The meeting ended with a short discussion on the format of the Slovenia meeting. Judy Marsh noted that she would be unable to attend the meeting and it was decided that Steve Stead should act as temporary secretary.

The working group would like to formally thank Roger Leech and Neil Beagrie of the Royal Commission on Sites and Monuments (England) for hosting this meeting and for arranging several very interesting (and very wet) field trips.