SAA style guide

Please consult the SAA Style Guide for information regarding all textual elements, including citations and references cited, number and date style, measurements, mathematical and statistical copy, and radiometric ages and dates, as well as use of quotations, spelling, italics, capitalization, hyphenation, abbreviations, accents and diacritical marks, contractions, serial commas, parentheses, and hyperlinks.

Editorial Policy, Information for Authors, and Style Guide for American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, and Advances in Archaeological Practice (revised 2023)

Normas Editoriales, Información para los Autores y Guía Estilística para American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity y Advances in Archaeological Practice (revisada en 2023)

Aims and scope

American Antiquity is a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal and is considered the premier journal of North American archaeology. AAQ is devoted to archaeology regionally conducted in the Western Hemisphere (North America) inclusive of diverse archaeological methods and theory pertinent to the study of North American archaeology and closely related subjects with global impact.

Article types accepted

ARTICLE (suggested length: 10,000 words + maximum 10 figures): these address topics of major importance in a way that reaches out to a broad audience of professional archaeologists and the informed public. 

REPORT (suggested length: 3,000 words + maximum 5 figures): these may be more technical than Articles, may address a specific topic, and may be of primary interest to relatively fewer readers. 

Authors are encouraged to contact the editor(s) if they are unsure about the status of their work as an Article or Report. 

COMMENT (suggested length: 1,000 words): these correct major errors of fact or provide new information directly relevant to a paper published previously in American Antiquity; differences of interpretation or opinion may accompany such demonstrations but may not be the primary motivating factor for a Comment. Those whose work is being commented on are given the opportunity to reply to the specific points raised in the Comment. The Comment and accompanying reply are usually published together, at which time the exchange ends. 

FORUM: these consist of an essay or opinion on current issues or topics of immediate significance to a broad audience. A Forum is occasionally solicited by the editor, and is exclusive to American Antiquity. Unsolicited submissions are welcome but authors are encouraged to contact the editor before submitting. 

Preparing your article for submission

Manuscripts should be compiled in the following order, in a single document file:

• Author list with Corresponding Author designation, full contact details, and affiliations, including country
• English abstract (200 words or less) 
• English keywords (3—5 words) 
• Main text
• Acknowledgments
• Funding Statement
• Data Availability Statement
• Competing Interests Statement
• Notes
• References Cited
• Supplemental material caption(s) (if applicable)
• Figure caption(s)
• Table(s)
• Table caption(s) 

Figures should be uploaded as separate, numbered files. Tables:  .doc(x) and .xls(x) files are accepted; authors may prefer to submit large/complex tables in .xls. 

The journal accepts supplemental material (text, figures, tables, images, appendixes, videos, etc.) that can be posted as online companion files at the time of publication. 

If an article is accepted for publication, authors will be asked to submit final files in the following order and with the following additional elements (bolded):

• Author list with Corresponding Author designation, full contact details, and affiliations, including country
• English abstract (200 words or less) 
• English keywords (3—5 words) 
• Second-language abstract(s) (200 words or less)
• Second language keywords (3—5 words) 
• Main text
• Acknowledgments
• Funding Statement
• Data Availability Statement
• Competing Interests Statement
• Notes
• References Cited
• Supplemental material caption(s) (if applicable)
• Figure caption(s)
• Table(s)
• Table caption(s) 

Abstract and keywords

The abstract, which summarizes a manuscript and its argument, has a 200-word limit. Authors must also submit 3—5 keywords. 

Spanish or other second-language abstracts and keywords for manuscripts written in English are not required at the time of submission but will be required if the manuscript is accepted for publication. Abstracts and keywords can also be accepted in Portuguese and French, when regionally appropriate.

Acknowledgments

The Acknowledgments section of a manuscript is inserted at the end of the text, using a tertiary heading—Acknowledgments.—placed flush left and immediately preceding the Funding Statement. Support for completion of a project and manuscript should be cited: institutional, intellectual, and technical (e.g., drafting of figures, translation of abstract). Authors who have worked collaboratively with communities should acknowledge their partners, individually or collectively. This section must be brief. Verbose acknowledgments will be edited prior to publication. Phrases of the sort “all errors are the sole responsibility of the author” should be omitted. The Acknowledgments section must contain a statement regarding the permits needed for the work described. This should include the permit number(s), year(s), and the name of the permitting agency or agencies. If no permit was required, this should be noted. If you would like to thank your editors, please do that by email, not in your published acknowledgments. Not all authors thank the editors, and we do not want to create any perception of favoritism. 

Funding statement

The Funding Statement section of a manuscript is inserted following the Acknowledgments, using a tertiary heading— Funding Statement.—placed flush left and immediately preceding the Data Availability Statement. Please supply all details required by any funding and grant-awarding bodies as a separate section of your manuscript, as follows:

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: “This research received no specific grant funding from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.”

Data availability statement

The Data Availability Statement is intended to communicate to readers where the data are available or where the objects from which the data were derived can be obtained. Manuscripts that do not use original data should use this language: “No original data were used.” SAA journals support practices that increase data access and research transparency. Authors are strongly encouraged to make their data available through resources such as institutional repositories, digital archives with access options, or other sites that support both data preservation and allow access as appropriate. If data are legally restricted, authors should share that information in this statement. Supplemental material is not an acceptable place to provide raw data related to publication, as this is not archived with the body of the journal article. Raw data should be deposited in a repository and referenced in the text by a DOI (e.g., tdar.org, zenodo.org, osf.io, etc.)

Notes

If a utility was used to compile hyperlinked endnotes in a manuscript (e.g., “Insert endnote” function in Microsoft Word), it must be disabled and the manuscript submitted with plain text formatting.

Notes should be used sparingly in a manuscript to provide absolutely essential additional information or clarification only when inclusion of that information in the actual text would prove disruptive to the flow of the manuscript by adding too much detail on a particular point or by additional tangential material to the argument in progress. The section with the text for all notes begins a new page before the References Cited section of the paper, under the primary heading Notes. Footnotes are not allowed. Double space all entries, and list each note, paragraph style, beginning with the appropriate number. 

Example:

1. Surveys currently are being conducted in the Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, and Cuntisuyu areas of the Cuzco region. The preliminary results of these surveys support the findings presented here.

In-text reference citations

In-text year citations always immediately follow the name(s) of the author(s). All of the examples make use of parentheses in their ordinary format, but note that when reference citations are used in textual material set off in parentheses, the parentheses in the citations convert to brackets.

            Example: (e.g., Shapere [1985] on the constitution of “observations” in physics, and Kosso [1989] on observation in science generally).

In-text citations should include a page number when the citation is to a book or monograph. Page numbers should always be provided for quotations, definitions, paraphrasing, and other use of exact terms regardless of the source. For more information and examples, please see the SAA Style Guide.

References cited

All references cited in the text must appear in the References Cited section list (except for personal communications and primary-source materials), and all entries in the list must be cited in the text.

When formatting references, entries should be flush left. Arrange the parts of each reference in the general order author(s)/editor(s), date, title (and subtitle if applicable), publisher, location of publisher. 

Alphabetize the references cited section by the last names of authors. Use complete first names and middle initials for authors and editors as they appear on the title page of the work. (Use initials only for authors known by initials [e.g., C. S. Lewis].) Names beginning with Mac or Mc are alphabetized letter by letter, as they appear.

Two or more works by the same author or authors should be listed chronologically (repeating author name[s] for each entry); two or more by the same author or authors in the same year should be listed in the order they are first referred to in the text and differentiated by lowercase letters following the date (e.g., 1991a, 1991b). An exception is discussed in Subsection 3.4.5 in the SAA Style Guide.

Use headline-style capitalization for all English language titles, including articles, book chapters, reports, etc. Use sentence-style capitalization for all Spanish language article and book titles (but use headline style for Spanish or other language journal titles). Use appropriate format for other foreign-language titles with respect to capitalization, accents, etc. For titles published in non-Roman alphabets—Chinese, Cyrillic, etc.—give title in Romanized transcription when possible, with English translation of the title following immediately in brackets.

If a bibliographic compiler (e.g., EndNote) has been used, authors are required to convert the output to plain text before submitting/uploading manuscripts. When citing DOIs, it is usually unnecessary to include an access date. However, when citing dataset DOIs (e.g., tDAR, Open Context, figshare, etc.), always include access dates.

For more information and examples, see the SAA Style Guide.

Artwork, figures, and other graphics

All illustrative materials are referred to as “Figures.” Tables and figures must be cited in the text, for example (see Table 1). They should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals and captions provided. Figures and tables should not be interspersed in the text. For detailed information on figure preparation, please see the ###a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/authors/journals/journals-artwork-guide" target="_blank">Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

Reproduction of copyrighted material: Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. Authors must also obtain permissions to use images of people who can be recognized. A copy of the paperwork granting permission should be provided to the Cambridge production editor. You may be asked to pay a permissions fee by the copyright holder; any permissions fees must be paid for by the author. For an example of a permissions request form please see the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide. 

Illustrators or photographers who are not authors should provide written permission to use the image and be credited in the caption.

            Examples: Photograph courtesy of John M. Smith or Illustration by John M. Smith and used with permission.

Tables

Tabular presentation of data should be used sparingly. Data in a very short table, for example, can often be included in the text with no loss of clarity. Large numbers of individual, similar facts, however, are best presented in a table. Avoid using abbreviations and acronyms in tables. If they cannot be avoided, they must be spelled out in the accompanying notes. Each table should have a title.

Editors, at their discretion, may require long tables be published online as supplemental material, rather than in the printed text.

Data tables should be submitted in .xls(x), .doc(x), or similar commonly used formats. They may not be submitted as image files.

Consult Chapter 3 of the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, for detailed information on planning and constructing tables; also see recent issues of the journals and the SAA Style Guide.

Supplemental materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplemental material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplemental material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplemental materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplemental materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

Competing interests

All authors must include a competing interests declaration in their manuscript. 

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual, or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors. 

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organization A. Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organization C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none.”