citing sources
All citations should conform to the Society for American Archaeology Style Guide. In brief, in-text citations look like this:
(Smith 1999:24-27). Or: According to Smith (1999:24-27),.... In your list of "References Cited" use tabs to indent the year and subsequent lines; you do not need to replicate the idiosyncratic spacing presented in the Style Guide.
Page numbers from where, specifically, within a document you derived the information you are collecting are essential! So, all in-text citations must have page numbers.
Important issue: Can I use one citation at the end of a multiple sentence paragraph, or do I have to cite for every sentence? Short answer: NO. Read more here; this is important!
Examples:
Article in a Journal:
Ashmore, Wendy
1991 Site-Planning Principles and Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient Maya. Latin American Antiquity 2:199–226.
Chapter in an Edited Book or Monograph:
Manzanilla, Linda
1999 The Emergence of Complex Urban Societies in Central Mexico: The Case of Teotihuacan. In Archaeology in Latin America,
edited by Gustavo G. Politis and Benjamin Alberti, pp. 93–129. Routledge, London.
Electronic resources/website:
Treat web pages, electronic documents, and open data as published data, but cite the document accordingly as a single- or multiple-authored document or as one produced by a group or agency (no author specified). For example, in text: (Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Laborator 2001)
In References Cited:
Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Laboratory
2001 XRF Information. Electronic document, http://www.obsidianlab.com, accessed April 12, 2010.
Common mistakes:
Climate and Weather Historical Summaries, Crestone, Colorado. Western Regional Climate Center, electronic resources
accessed September 10, 2018.
Other suggestions for a strong, reader friendly, persuasive paper:
(Smith 1999:24-27). Or: According to Smith (1999:24-27),.... In your list of "References Cited" use tabs to indent the year and subsequent lines; you do not need to replicate the idiosyncratic spacing presented in the Style Guide.
Page numbers from where, specifically, within a document you derived the information you are collecting are essential! So, all in-text citations must have page numbers.
Important issue: Can I use one citation at the end of a multiple sentence paragraph, or do I have to cite for every sentence? Short answer: NO. Read more here; this is important!
Examples:
Article in a Journal:
Ashmore, Wendy
1991 Site-Planning Principles and Concepts of Directionality among the Ancient Maya. Latin American Antiquity 2:199–226.
Chapter in an Edited Book or Monograph:
Manzanilla, Linda
1999 The Emergence of Complex Urban Societies in Central Mexico: The Case of Teotihuacan. In Archaeology in Latin America,
edited by Gustavo G. Politis and Benjamin Alberti, pp. 93–129. Routledge, London.
Electronic resources/website:
Treat web pages, electronic documents, and open data as published data, but cite the document accordingly as a single- or multiple-authored document or as one produced by a group or agency (no author specified). For example, in text: (Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Laborator 2001)
In References Cited:
Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Laboratory
2001 XRF Information. Electronic document, http://www.obsidianlab.com, accessed April 12, 2010.
Common mistakes:
- placing a single citation at the end of a paragraph that is filled with content from one or more authors (see above; there is a method for solving this!)
- missing date accessed from electronic resources/webpages
- putting a citation at the end of a sentence rather than when an author is first mentioned in the text. For example, "Smith describes the process of extracting water from rocks (Smith 1999:21-25). This is incorrect; instead, present the citation this way: "Smith (1999:21-25) describes the process of extracting water from rocks."
- Missing the year for a citation in the "References Cited" section. See this example with a missing year:
Climate and Weather Historical Summaries, Crestone, Colorado. Western Regional Climate Center, electronic resources
accessed September 10, 2018.
Other suggestions for a strong, reader friendly, persuasive paper:
- After you have drafted your paper, read all of your paragraph topic sentences. If they don't fit together logically and make sense together, you have a structural problem that needs to be fixed.
