Northeastern Anthropological Association records
name: label: Creator
content: Northeastern Anthropological Association
topic: label: Topic
content: Professional associations
creator: label: Creator
content: Northeastern Anthropological Association
bioghist: label: Historical Note
content: The Northeastern Anthropological Association was organized in 1961 as the Northeastern Anthropological Conference. Through much of its history, the association seemed to lay a particularly strong emphasis on informality and lack of strong organization. Initially, the conference was guided by an ad hoc committee assisted by a secretary-treasurer and, of especial importance, a program chairman. Membership, which existed in the informal sense that a person attended meetings, was unrestricted and drawn from students and professional anthropologists from the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. 

The activities of the Northeastern Anthropological Assoication have centered almost entirely on its annual meetings. (Even much of the newsletter, first issued in 1978, was concerned with future and past meetings.) The meeting has become the typical afffair of handling business and holding scholarly session with formal papers. During the late 1960s the association took strong formal stands on academic freedom and opposition to the war in Vietnam and United States involvement in Cambodia. Again in the early 1980s, the association again became somewhat active in issues involvoing governmental policies and academic freedom. 

The present name of the organization was adopted in 1965 when the group undertook an intiative to become a regional organization of the American Anthropological Association (an initiative which was not completed at that time). With the change of name, the association's roster of officers was expanded to include a president and vice president (who was also the president-elect). The officers of the association together with an elected member-at-large formed the executive committee which ran the affairs of the society. A constitution was informally adopted in the late 1960s, but its was not formally adopted by vote of members until 1971. Membership became a formal matter in 1970. In 1978, the constitution was amended to extend the roster of officers (and, hence the executive committee) to include the immediate past program chairman and the immediate past president. The billing services of the American Anthropological Association were engaged in 1977. The society was incorporated in the state of Vermont in 1982.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 1.5 Linear feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1962-1982
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.XXXX.0321
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The collection consists of minutes, programs, announcements, abstracts of papers presented at meetings, newsletters, and letters. Material in the folders for the earliest years are "file record forms" that include such data as place of the annual meeting and names of the officers. The were created after the year that they cover. 

Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.