CAA has been meeting annually for almost forty years, so one might expect that we would have a reasonable idea of the nature and role of archaeological computing. Yet some apparently see this as an emerging field (e.g. Bimber & Chang 2011), others suggest the need for a new archaeological speciality: Archaeological Information Science (Llobera 2011). Even the Wikipedia page on computational archaeology describes archaeoinformatics as an emerging discipline. Is this a sign of a lack of confidence in developments over the past forty years, or is it the reverse - an indication of self-assurance and a sense of moving boldly forward through a more formal definition of the subject? Is it connected with the growing appearance of cyber-archaeology in digital research outside of archaeology itself (e.g. Zimbra et al 2010)? What are the implications for archaeological computing? This paper will seek to address these and related questions.