The association's activities include sponsoring lectures, field visits, and study tours; as well as publishing its journal, Archaeologia Cambrensis, and monographs.

[1] The association holds two meetings each year, a week in mid-summer and an autumn weekend, visiting sites and monuments in all parts of Wales and, on occasions, in England, Scotland, Ireland and abroad.

The G. T. Clark Prizes are awarded every five years for the most distinguished published contributions to the study of the archaeology and history of Wales and The Marches.

[3] Apart from the journal Archaeologia Cambrensis, the association has a long tradition of publishing supplementary volumes on Welsh History and Archaeology.

In 2013 it published a Festschrift, Reflections on the Past, on the theme of British prehistory and archaeology, to mark the longstanding contribution made by the prehistorian Frances Lynch to the work of the association.

[6] Other important publications by the association include: The Cambrian Archaeological Society was founded at a time when a sense of Welsh national identity was increasingly asserting itself.

The ideas he put forward owed much to current developments in France, which followed the appointment in 1834 of the French novelist Prosper Mérimée as the first Inspector-General of Monuments Historiques.

The first annual meeting of the Cambrian Archaeological Society was held at Aberystwyth between 7 and 10 September 1847, and the first president was Sir Stephen Richard Glynne.

In 1849 Harry Longueville Jones resigned as joint general secretary on his appointment to the Civil Service position in the Privy Council office as Inspector for National Schools in Wales.

Another figure was the youthful Edward Augustus Freeman,[16] later celebrated as a medieval historian, and, from 1884, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford.

Also in this group was John Obadiah Westwood, a notable Oxford entomologist, whose studies of inscribed and sculptured stones of the post Roman period was to provide a systematic approach to the subject.

The Cambrian Archaeological Association was to sponsor the publication of Westwood's Lapidarium Walliæ: the early Inscribed and Sculptured Stones of Wales in 1876–1879.

[21] At this point the association became more involved in Archaeology, sponsoring through an appeal the Rev David Davies' (their local Secretary for Montgomeryshire) excavations on the Roman auxiliary fort at Caersws which was published in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1857.

Longueville Jones, who was travelling extensively in Wales as part of his duties as inspector of National schools, now had more time as editor of Archaeologia Cambrensis.

He produced many articles and listings of archaeological sites, which furthered his campaign for the establishment of a Monuments Record and Inspectorate, and anticipated the formation of the Welsh Royal Commission in 1908.

Other important publications were by Hon W O Stanley on his excavation of tumuli in Anglesey and one on Wigmore Abbey and Monastic Grange in Herefordshire by Edward Blore.

Blore was a leading architect, who had been employed by Queen Victoria to re-build Buckingham Palace and he was an accomplished topographical artist specialising in later Medieval architecture.

His drawings of Wigmore Grange were engraved by John le Keux and are some of the finest topographical prints published in Archaeologia Cambrensiis.

Romilly Allen was to replace Westwood (who died in 1893) as the acknowledged expert on inscribed and sculptured stones of the post Roman period and his researches in Scotland are even better known than those he undertook in Wales.

[24] Later, Romilly Allen, as editor of Archaeologia Cambrensis, commented that "the Cambrian Archaeological Association has always shown itself willing to receive advice courteously offered, but it can never admit the contention that the Society of Antiquaries has the right to send its officials to Wales to dictate how explorations should be conducted".

The most ambitious meeting was in 1899 when the association hired a steamer to voyage round the Western Isles of Scotland to visit remote sites and see sculptured stones.

The social life on these yearly trips and meetings from 1908 onwards is well described in Evelyn Lewes' book Out with the Cambrians, which was published in 1934[26] Following the death in 1907 of Romilly Allen, the Rev Rupert Morris, originally from Holywell in Flintshire took over the editorship.

Much of the organisation of the association was undertaken by the noted geologist and Palaeolithic archaeologist William Boyd Dawkins, who had been born at Buttington, near Welshpool.

'Mortimer Wheeler encouraged non-professional archaeologists, such as the Bangor Architect Harold Hughes and Dr Willoughby Gardner in their research on Hillforts of Northern Wales.

Also Sir Cyril Fox, who succeeded Wheeler as the Director of the National Museum of Wales, published his survey of Offa's Dyke in parts in Archaeologia Cambrensis.

The first president was Sir Stephen Glynne, the brother-in-law of William Gladstone, a passionate ecclesiologist, who was a guiding figure of the association for many years.

It is very clear that the summer meetings were used as a forum (outside the formal events), for the discussion of matters not directly associated with archaeology or Welsh history.

Since the Second World War the presidents have been a mixture of leading academics, professional architects and archaeologists, the occasional Anglican cleric, and local historians, such as J. D. K. Lloyd of Montgomery, the editor of Archaeologia Cambrensis for many years.