Style Guide

The Pre-Columbian Studies Program follows a social science citation system, with in-text call-outs for references. Footnotes are used sparingly, if at all, and only for clarifications or discussions not directly related to the flow of the text. Our style is closest to that of American Antiquity, with several notable exceptions, particularly the use of full first names, rather than initials. Please consult with the scholarly editor prior to submitting your paper on the agreed-upon conventions for the volume (Inca or Inka, for example). For matters of style and form not covered in this guide, please consult the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, or contact our office. Papers submitted in a form other than the one specified here will be returned for corrections or rejected outright. For information on submitting a manuscript to Dumbarton Oaks, consult our Submission Guide.

For questions, please contact the department via telephone (202-339-6440), fax (202-625-0284) or email.

Citations and Endnotes

All references in the text must be matched by a full citation in the "References Cited" section at the end of the paper. Please do not include extraneous items in this section (i.e., if a work is not cited in the text it should not be in "References Cited"). References must be checked for accuracy; papers with an unreasonable number of errors will be returned. Papers submitted in a citation style other than the one indicated here will not be accepted.

For simple citations, please use parenthetical call-outs within the text. For example, a reference to the work of Gordon Willey should be indicated by his last name and the year of the publication, with the full citation in the "References Cited" section: (Willey 1950). If a specific datum is referred to, the specific page number must be included: "According to Willey, a similar example was excavated at La Joya (1950: 67)." Please note that in contrast to American Antiquity, a space follows the colon. Publications issued over a number of years should be designated "1914–36" rather than "1914–1936." Please note also that complete pages numbers should be given: 73–75, and 1013–1047.

For Spanish surnames, please use both where possible, unless you know the author in question prefers to use a single surname. When referring in general to an edited volume, the citation is the same "(Morlion 2005)." In the rare cases where a scholar both edited a volume and published a monograph in the same year, it is acceptable to indicate in the call-out "ed.": (Morlion, ed. 2005).

When referring to an illustration in a publication, please take care to determine if one should be citing the editor of a catalogue (King 2000: no. 13), or the author of the article in which the illustration appears (Falchetti 2003: fig. 22). Please also note which volume is being used in a multi-volume work: (Cervantes de Salazar 1914–36, 1: 73–75).

For unpublished information, please indicate the date of personal communication: "(Juan Antonio Murro, personal communication, July 2005)." Please avoid citing unpublished papers if possible. If you must cite them, please use "n.d." If the work in question has been accepted for publication and its appearance in print is near, the reference should be followed with "(in press)." If multiple unpublished papers by an author are cited, they should follow as "n.d.a." and "n.d.b." It is the author's responsibility to track these unpublished papers as they are published, and forward the publication data to the scholarly editor and this office. In citing both of these forms of unpublished data, please be prepared to provide documentation, and if necessary, permission to use the information.

Unpublished theses (doctoral and masters) should be indicated with an "n.d." followed by the date of the thesis in brackets (Millaire n.d. [2001]). This applies to all theses, including those on microfilm.

Other explanatory endnotes should be designated in the text by means of a superscript number placed after punctuation. Indent the first line of each note and add the number in superscript; do not place periods after the numbers or enclose numbers in parentheses. The author is responsible for verifying all references and citations before submitting the manuscript.

References Cited

This section should be in a separate section following the endnotes. The entries should be listed alphabetically by author surname. Please include complete names, with the full first name (not just an initial), and both Spanish surnames in cases where the author prefers to use both names. When more than one work by a single author is included, list the works in descending order, beginning with the oldest work. Reprints of historical works should list the date of the reprint followed by the date of the original work in brackets. Unpublished works (all "n.d." references, including theses) should come at the bottom. Do not divide the entries into categories, such as "books," "articles," and "manuscripts." Italicize book and journal titles. Do not add in tabs or extra spaces. With some exceptions, indicated here, we use the style adopted by the Society for American Archaeology, which is explained in volume 44 of American Antiquity (1979: 193–205). Here are a few examples:

A book (modern):

Lockhart, James
1992 The Nahuas after the Conquest. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

A historical work:

Acosta, José de
1940 [1590] Historia natural y moral de las Indias. Fondo de Cultura Económica,
México, D.F.

Uhle, Max
1991 [1903] Pachamac: A Reprint of the 1903 Edition by Max Uhle (Izumi Shimada ed.). University Museum Monograph 62. University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

An edited volume:

Moseley, Michael E., and Kent C. Day (eds.)
1982 Chan Chan: Andean Desert City. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

A monograph in a series:

Blanton, Richard E.
1972 Prehispanic Settlement Patterns of the Ixtapalapa Peninsula Region, Mexico.
William T. Sanders, et al., eds. Occasional Papers in Anthropology 6. Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

A chapter in an edited volume:

Bawden, Garth
1990 Domestic Space and Social Structure in Pre-Columbian North Peru. In Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study (Susan Kent, ed.): 153–171. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

An article in a journal:

Andrews, E. Wyllys, and Barbara W. Fash
1990 Continuity and Change in a Royal Maya Residential Complex at Copan. Ancient Mesoamerica3: 63–88.

A thesis:

Conrad, Geoffrey W.
n.d. Burial Platforms and Related Structures on the North Coast of Peru: Some Social and Political Implications. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1974.

An unpublished paper:

Evans, Susan Toby
n.d. Palaces and Political Power in Classic and Postclassic Central Mexico: Antecedents of the Aztec Tecpan. In Ancient American Elite Residences. Jessica Christie and Patricia Joan Sarro, eds. University of Texas Press, Austin (in press).

Stuart, David
n.d. K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' and the Early History of Copán. A paper presented at a symposium entitled "Understanding Early Classic Copán," at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Philadelphia, April 2000.

Please also bear in mind:

Commonly accepted temporal designations should be capitalized: Pre-Columbian, Pre-Hispanic, Pre-Classic, Late Postclassic, Middle Classic, and Early Horizon. Centuries should be in lower case but written out: sixteenth century.

For references to Maya relief sculpture, use the full name of the site and the monument designation established by the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions.

Within the text, accents should be used for applicable personal names, institutional names, titles of works, and geographic locations:

José García Payón's work at El Tajín
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Códice Chimalpopoca
Cerro Baúl

Captions

Each caption should give the figure number, the identification of the figure (material, place of origin, size, and present location as appropriate), and a credit for the illustration. In general, the captions should be short and concern matters of identification, leaving longer explanations for the text itself.

Please make sure the data in these illustrations follow the editorial convention of the entire volume. For example, if the style of the volume is to spell Inca with a "c," all illustrations must reflect this, unless they include direct quotes from historical sources or if there is a valid scholarly reason for using a variant spelling.

Please use a single figure designation for a single image; do not use "Fig. 5a, 5b, 5c" for scattered images on a single page. The only place where such usage is acceptable is when you are referring to a designated part of a single image. Here are a few examples of captions:

Fig. 4 Ceramic stirrup-spout bottle, excavated by Santiago Uceda at Huaca de la Luna in the Moche Valley. 9 1/8 in. (23.2 cm). Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, Peru, inv. 3499. Photograph by Steve Bourget.

Fig. 17 Olmec-style ceramic vessel, perhaps from Tlatilco, Mexico (present location unknown). Photograph courtesy of Library Services, the American Museum of Natural History, New York, no. 4322.

Fig. 5 Roll-out drawing of a polychrome ceramic vessel from Tomb 42, La Joya. Drawing by Hélène Bernier.

Fig. 1 Map of Panama, showing the location of archaeological sites, modern towns and prominent geographical features. Drawing by Jean-François Cooke (after García Castillo 2001: fig. 12 and Murro 1999: fig. 1).

Captions for tables should be listed and numbered separately.

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