NOTES TO CONTRIBUTORS

Yes! We'd like YOU to write for assemblage!


Please see our Call for Papers to learn more about the kind of material assemblage seeks.

NB: The General Notes on Submissions and Style Guide below describe our requirements and procedures for formal contributions and may not be applicable to all submissions: obviously, if you wanted to send us a horoscope column, we wouldn't require an abstract, and we probably wouldn't send it off for peer review. However, please follow these instructions carefully when submitting formal research papers, feature articles, Forum contributions, and other scholarly works. Pay close attention to the section on citation and references. We will send your submission back to you for revision, if these are not followed, possibly resulting in delayed publication. (We know that composing bibliographies is tedious, but it is more tedious to complete and correct someone else's!)

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SPECIAL NOTES TO AUTHORS

Copyright
Copyright is retained and managed by the author. However, by submitting work to assemblage, authors are agreeing to the following conditions:

Authors should also assume that some readers will print copies of specific articles from the Wordwide Web for their own research, just as they would make photocopies of printed material.

If the author publishes her or his submission again elsewhere, after it has appeared in assemblage, (s)he is requested to cite the assemblage version of the paper, including the full URL (Web 'address').

A plea from the editors

We would appreciate contributors' assistance in the following matters.

  1. Since the journal is produced on a stringent budget, we prefer to communicate with contributors by e. mail when possible. Of course, you can telephone, fax, or send regular post if you like, but we prefer to e-mail our responses to you.
  2. Please help ease rapid and simple publication by carefully adhering to all the guidelines which follow. Full-time graduate students cheerfully volunteer their time to produce this journal as a service to the archaeological community, but do not revel in fixing bad grammar and spelling, incomplete referencing, and careless mistakes. The reason for insisting on certain conventions and reference styles, etc., is not to torment contributors, but to make sure the text is easily converted to the Web format, and to ensure consistency within the journal.

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GENERAL NOTES ON SUBMISSIONS

Submitting a work to assemblage implies that the article has not been published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Most submissions to assemblage will be subject to peer review. Assessment is generally done by members of the editorial team in conjunction with advanced postgraduate students and lecturers in archaeology at the University of Sheffield and other British universities. assemblage uses double-blind refereeing; i.e. neither the author nor the referee is told the other's identity. The referee may, however, waive anonymity, and if both parties desire it, the editors will facilitate direct communication between referee and author.

Authors are free to suggest referees who would be able to evaluate their work, but the editors are not bound to accept them.

Submissions which are not adequately prepared or do not conform to our guidelines in terms of subject, length, or style, may be summarily rejected, or we may request that they be revised and corrected.

Contributors are encouraged to seek the help of colleagues in the preparation of submission, and to check their work carefully. An article makes a poor impression if it is written in a sloppy manner, if there are errors in spelling, or if the citations co not match the listed references, and so forth.

Contributors will be informed as soon as possible whether their submission has been accepted, requires revision and reconsideration, or has been rejected. The process usually takes one or two months, but may take longer, depending on the availability of referees.

Initial submissions

Are you interested in writing for assemblage? Please send us an abstract, or very brief proposal for an article, outlining your intentions, as soon as possible.

First drafts should generally be under 3,500 words in length, and should be submitted to assemblage as three double-spaced hard copies and an electronic version, sent on 3.5-inch IBM PC-formatted diskette or as e-mail attachments. Electronic documents should be in Microsoft Word® or text-only/ASCII format, or both. Do not send us HTML documents. (You would not be doing us a favour, if you did, regardless of what you might think.)

For the initial submission, please do not include original artwork, photographs, etc. High-quality photocopies of figures will suffice at this stage.

We regret that type-scripts and related materials cannot be returned.

Final Submissions
If a draft has been accepted, and once all required revision and correction has been made by the author, authors will be required to submit one hard copy, and a matching electronic version (see above for formatting instructions). Diskettes bearing electronic versions should be carefully packaged and labelled with the author's name, the file name, and the document format(s) used.

If possible, please submit illustrations scanned and on diskette (or as e-mail attachments) as interlaced GIF or progressive JPEG files. (That means no BMP, PCX, PICT, or TIFF files, inter alia.) Otherwise, submit a high-quality hard copies, such as photographs, suitable for scanning. (Do not send colour photocopies of photographs.)

With all articles, please include a short note (c. 100 words) about the author(s). This should include place of study/work, research interests, postal and e-mail addresses, and may also include other interests and previous publication.

Authors will be given the opportunity to proofread their articles once they have been converted into Web documents (HTML). (Proofreading may be done on line or on paper.) Proofs should be promptly and carefully read, and the editors should be notified of any necessary changes. Only corrections and very minor revisions may be suggested at this stage.

If contributors do not have access to the Web themselves, the editors will supply them with a printed copy of the issue in which their work appears.

Important Note: Authors must have the permission of anyone whose unpublished work (including items in-press, manuscripts on file, personal communications, etc.) is cited or used in their paper. Authors must also have permission to reproduce any previously published figures, illustrations, etc., and must clearly indicate the source in their paper. Authors (and not assemblage) are responsible for their paper's contents, and for the legal right to publish any material submitted.

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STYLE GUIDE

Organisation
The manuscript should have page numbers and should be ordered in this way (all elements should be begun on new pages):

  1. title page;
  2. 200-word abstract and 3-7 keywords (for scholarly articles only);
  3. text -- three levels of headings may be used;
  4. appendices;
  5. acknowledgements;
  6. notes;
  7. works cited;
  8. figures, tables, numbered
  9. figure and table captions, numbered

    The title page must include the the paper's title, author's name, the sentence 'DO NOT CITE IN ANY CONTEXT WITHOUT PERMISSION OF AUTHORS', author's affiliation and mailing address, including email and telephone number.

    References

    Citation in the text should be in the form of '(Bloggs 1987: 14)' (space after the colon), while lists of authors in the text' should appear as '(Bloggs 1992; Whimsy 1996)', or as '(Bloggs 1992: 13; Whimsy 1996: 45)' (separated by semicolon), while multiple works by the same author should appear as Bloggs (1992, 1987) (separated by comma). As a rule, citations should be in the same order as they appear in the appended list of works cited: first in alphabetical order, then in chronological order

    .

    In this form of referencing, 'ibid.' and 'op. cit.' should not be used.

    The list of works cited should use the following forms:

    Harley, J.B. 1988. Maps, knowledge and power. In The Iconography of Landscape. (eds D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 177-312.

    Taylor, R.E. and R. Berger. 1980. The date of 'Noah's Ark'. Antiquity 54: 34-36.

    Henson, D. 1982. Flint as Raw Material in Prehistory(Emphasis on Lincolnshire and Yorkshire). Unpublished MPhil thesis 5358. University of Sheffield.

    Augé, M. 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (trans. John Howe). London: Verso.

    If the original edition of a work is much older than the edition cited, indicate the original date of publication thus (Rousseau 1968 [1762]).

    Personal communications ('pers. comm.') should be only used when absolutely necessary, i.e. when the point is essential and there is no published reference for the information.

    If an unpublished manu/type-script is cited, give full information as to where it may be located. (E.g. name of archive, 'in possession of author', etc.)

    For the referencing of electronic publications, please see The Guide for Citing Electronic Information.

    Style

    • Contributors are asked to write in clear, concise, and non-sexist English with a minimum of jargon.
    • Use 'and' instead of '&'.
    • Use 'percent' instead of '%' .
    • Accent and diacritic marks should be clearly marked, accurate, and consistent.
    • Do not use hyphenated word breaks at the end of lines.
    • Do not indent paragraphs; instead, leave an extra line between them.
    • Do not use underlining for emphasis. Use italics instead. Italics should be used for species names, uncommon foreign words, and book titles.
    • Notes should be used sparingly; where they are essential, use endnotes instead of footnotes.
    • The abbreviations 'e.g.', 'i.e.', and 'etc.', 'et al.', 'c.', 'cf.', and 'vs' should be lower case and not italicised. (Note that 'cf.' means 'compare with', not 'see'.)
    • Quotations over three lines long should be indented. Single quotation marks should enclose quotations included within the main body of the text and for emphasis; double quotation marks should be used for quotations within quotations, and quotation marks should not include final full stops and commas (all of this the opposite of the American convention).
    • Full stops should not be used in abbreviations or acronyms such as 'IFA' or 'WAC' An abbreviation or acronym which may not be widely and internationally known, should be introduced first, e.g. 'the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR)'.
    • For temperature, units, chemical notation, etc. -- international notation and metric units should be used.
    • Use British spelling, but do not alter spelling in quotations, references, and the names of institutions.
    • Capitalisation: Only capitalise north, south, etc. if part of an actual place name, e.g. 'South Africa', but 'the south of France', 'Central America' but 'central Mexico'.
    • Internet anchors: underline the text which should be anchored, and include the URL for the anchor immediately afterwards, in angular brackets. E.g. 'The mailbase archive <http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists-a-e/arch-theory> is useful for checking on past Arch-Theory conversations'.
    • Official site numbers should be included with site names whenever possible.

    Further examples of this 'modified Harvard' system of citation can be found in recent issues of World Archaeology.

    Dating conventions

    Please follow the conventions outlined in World Archaeology's notes to contributors (October 1995), reproduced here.
    1. In accordance with international convention, radiocarbon dates should be expressed as mean and standard deviation, together with the number of the issuing laboratory.
    e.g. a date of 3600 ( 600 BP (AA-50)

    or: the date was: K-3921 5540 ( 65 BP

    2. Calibrated dates should be indicated as follows: cal. AD 200; 250 cal. BC; a date in the range cal. AD 90-440.

    It may be useful to insert the phrase '(calibrated date)' after each first occurrence in a paper, to make the meaning perfectly clear. Note that after calibration ranges will often be used, since deviations may not be symmetrical about the mean.

    3. Calibrations should be made using the calibration curves of Stuiver and Pearson (1986) or Pearson and Stuiver (1986), depending on period. Both curves are published in Radiocarbon, 28, 2B. (Any suitable curve can be chosen for calibrating the period older than 5000 BP.)

    4. In order to maintain continuity with older literature, it may sometimes be necessary to present uncalibrated dates in terms of 'ad' or 'bc' (where 1950 BP = 0). We do not encourage this because dates presented in this way may not correspond closely with the calendrical AD/BC scale.

    5. Dates obtained by other methods, e.g. TL, Uranium Series, or Fission Track, are best referred to in years 'before present' or 'years ago', rather than by radiocarbon conventions.

    6. Old dates: Ma for 'millions of years' and ka for 'thousands of years' are advised as abbreviations recognized internationally.

    In doubt?
    Send us e. mail!<assemblage@sheffield.ac.uk>

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