Proceedings of the Eighty-Fourth Business Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists St. Louis, Missouri March 25-28, 2015.

This has been a very busy but successful year for AAPA, during which we have really moved forward on some tough issues. I want to start by thanking the executive committee, the general membership of AAPA, and especially those who have worked hard on a number of committees, often being called on very short notice with an issue that needs attention. It has been very gratifying to work with such cooperative and hardworking colleagues who care so much about our professional organization and our scientific discipline. It has been especially wonderful to work with the other officers of the AAPA: Susan Ant on, Annie Katzenberg, and Anne Grauer—a productive group of people who are serious, energetic, and committed to the hard work involved in keeping AAPA running smoothly. They are also very funny and therefore the best of colleagues. Our journal is thriving, our meetings continue to grow, and our financial status is strong. We have tried to think imaginatively about our organization and our meetings and welcome ideas from the membership. There was lot of activity in the AAPA throughout this year, in contrast to the previous year, which I guess was a warm-up period. Much of our business is reported on by the heads of the relevant committees, but I want to mention a few highlights. We certainly worked more with lawyers than we had the previous year. After many years of dissatisfaction with the management company that had handled collecting our dues and sending out mailings, we decided to engage a new one. We have had many problems over the years involving membership issues and access to information (and dissemination of misinformation). We finally made the decision to find alternative service. As will be described in the President-elect’s report, we established a lengthy procedure for choosing a new company. The dramatic growth of our organization over the last two decades has led to heavy loads and responsibilities for our volunteers who handle our membership and our local arrangements committees. Hence, we explored turning some of that work over to the new company. The new company is BAI (Burke and Associates Inc.) (http://www.burkinc.com/). We are exploring ways in which we can integrate their services in order to ease the burden on our volunteers. The selection committee read proposals, interviewed staff and representatives of different companies, and contacted other organizations for recommendations and reviews. The selection committee consisted of Susan Ant on, Anne Grauer, Annie Katzenberg, Karen Rosenberg, and Josh Snodgrass. In the fall, we were approached by a group of biological anthropologists (Timothy White, Margaret Schoeninger, and Robert Bettinger) who asked if the AAPA would support them by writing an amicus brief on their behalf in an appeal they were filing in the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals in connection with disposition of the La Jolla human skeletal remains which were excavated on land belonging to the University of California San Diego. Members of the repatriation committee (Steve Ousley, Ben Auerbach, and George Milner) worked hard to draft this letter on very short notice and to explain the value of scientific study of these remains and the importance of following NAGPRA procedures. The amicus brief was ultimately crafted by legal counsel to fit the appropriate legal standards and requirements of the Ninth Circuit in which the appeal was being made. At the time of the 2015 AAPA meetings no decision had been made by the court on the appeal. The AJPA and the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology are published by Wiley and this year our contract expired and we negotiated a new one. This is obviously a time of great change for the publishing industry in terms of technology and that had implications for our contract. Again, this was something we needed legal counsel to accomplish. For the second year in a row, AAPA participated in the CSSP (Council of Scientific Society Presidents). I attended the meeting in Washington in December and thought that it was potentially quite helpful. This organization allows us to work with the leaders of other scientific organizations some of which share concerns about such issues as open access and I think we can really benefit from continuing to participate. I recommend that we keep up our membership in this organization and keep sending someone to represent us at the biannual meetings which take place in May and December in Washington, DC. AAPA has reached out to some other scientific organizations with ideas about cosponsoring programming at conferences, such as the AAA, Anatomy, etc. AAPA received two significant grants this year: one from Elsevier, written by Andrea Taylor and Robin Bernstein (Action through organization: supporting mentoring and networking for early career women scientists through the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Women’s Initiative), and the other a proposal written by