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SCA Proceedings
Purpose
Proceedings were established in 1988 to make available papers presented at the Society's Annual Meetings. All papers presented at the Annual Meeting are eligible for publication, with the exception of those that have previously appeared in other publications. Thus, the Proceedings serve as a forum for all who participate in this annual celebration of California's rich and diverse past: archaeologists and Native Americans, avocationalists and professionals, professors and students, historians and prehistorians, and government staff and the public they serve. The Proceedings are published annually, thus ensuring prompt dissemination of research results. Since 2009, the SCA Proceedings have been published in electronic format on the SCA's web site.

These guidelines were revised March 5, 2012 and supersede all previous versions.br>
Responsibilities
The current Proceedings Committee includes:

Committee Chair and Editor:
Don Laylander - (858) 486-1761;

Assistant Editors:
Sharon Waechter -
Martin D. Rosen -
Shelly Davis-King -
Sherri Andrews -

All coordination with authors is handled by the Editor. The Editor will use the list of presenters to e-mail a call for submittals to all senior authors of papers.

Submission of Papers
All manuscripts must be submitted to the SCA Business Office no later than July 1, 2012. Submissions received after that date will be returned, unless prior arrangements have been made with the Editor.

The submitted paper should be substantively consistent with the paper presented at the Annual Meeting. It must not have been published elsewhere. The Proceedings will not publish papers that have appeared in the Society's Newsletter. (Note that papers may appear in another forum after they have been published in the Proceedings.)

When it is submitted, the content of the manuscript should be finalized and ready-to-publish, from the author's perspective. All necessary coordination with co-authors or with other concerned parties should have been completed prior to submission.

One electronic copy should be delivered via e-mail or on a CD, zip disk, or flash drive to the SCA Business Office. The submission should including all graphics and tables. It should include the paper's title, an abstract of not more than 200 words, the names and affiliations of the author(s), titles or captions for all figures and tables, and all references cited.

Editing Process
On receipt of the draft submission, the Editor will confirm receipt via return e-mail, phone, or letter to the primary author.

The Editor will reformat the submission, as needed, to conform to the style guide (see below), and do an initial editing. The Editor will then distribute electronic copies to assistant editors for additional editing.

The assistant editors will review and make comments on the electronic copy and return the electronic copy with comments to the Editor.

The Editor will use the assistant editors' comments to revise the paper, and will produce a version that will be submitted to the senior author for review no later than October 1, 2012.

Editorial Policies
Individual papers are published without formal peer review by the Proceedings editors, except as required to meet style, grammatical, and graphical standards, and to ensure conformity with the Society's Bylaws and Ethical Guidelines. Authors are responsible for accuracy of content, for attribution of citations and quotations, and for the legal right to publish any material. Authors must secure written permission to use figures or any other material protected by copyright law.

The primary author must be a member of the Society for California Archaeology in the year in which the paper is presented, unless the author participated in a symposium by special invitation.

Maps and text should not so precisely identify the locations of archaeological sites that may be vulnerable to vandalism that vandals may be assisted in locating them (for instance, more precisely than to the nearest 1-mi2 section).

Formatting Guidelines
The editors of the Proceedings strive to maintain quality and professionalism in the publication. To meet that goal, we require that all authors follow the most recent style guide of the Society for American Archaeology (http://www.saa.org/Portals/0/SAA/Publications/StyleGuide/styleguide.pdf), except as otherwise noted in these guidelines. If a submitted paper does not meet these guidelines, it may be returned to the author for correction.

Manuscripts should not exceed 8,000 words and should include no more than 12 graphics. Longer manuscripts may be accepted under certain circumstances, but we reserve the right to edit these to meet the word-count limit. Please include full names, affiliations, and addresses for all authors, so that the editors may contact authors for clarifications if necessary.

In addition to the SAA style guide, authors are asked to follow these specific guidelines:

Text
  • Submit documents in Microsoft Word format.
  • Use no more than three ranked headings, as follows:
    • HEADING 1: CENTERED, CAPS, BOLD
    • Heading 2: Left Aligned, Bold
    • Heading 3: Left Aligned, Italics
  • Use consistent heading format throughout the document.
  • For a quotation longer than four lines, set it off from the text with right and left indents.
  • Do not use footnotes. The use of endnotes should also be avoided, if possible. If endnotes are used, they should be indicated in the body text by sequential superscript Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) and compiled at the end of the text.
  • The initial reference to a site by name should include its site number in parentheses. Site numbers should be state trinomials, when those are available. After the first use, it is not necessary to preface trinomials with the state designation ("CA-," etc.).
  • Use of metric units for measurements is preferred, but the use of English units (mi., ft., in., liters, acres, etc.) is acceptable.
  • For decimal fractions, include a leading zero (e.g., "0.2 g", not ".2 g").
  • Trailing zeros should be used to indicate consistent levels of precision (e.g., "2.00 g, 0.01 g, and 0.70 g", not "2 g, 0.01 g, and 0.7 g," unless the precision of the different measurements is actually different).
  • Preferably express dates in the B.C./A.D. (or BCE/CE) system, except when reporting radiocarbon measurements (e.g., "2240 ±60 B.P."). If "B.P." dates must be used, make it clear whether radiocarbon years or calendar years are meant, and if the latter, whether years before the present (i.e., 2012) or before 1950 are meant. Use the phrase "years before the present" only to refer to calendar years before 2012. Calibrated radiocarbon ages should preferably be given as one- or two-sigma ranges (specifying which one), rather than as curve intercept point dates.
Tables
  • Submit tables using the table feature in Microsoft Word.
  • Do not submit tables as image files.
  • Do not submit tables that use tabs to align text into columns.
  • All tables must have captions and must be cited somewhere in the text. Number the tables sequentially. Table captions should be in title case (e.g., Table 1. Radiocarbon Dates from Seven Sites in Owens Valley).
Figures
  • Refer to all maps, drawings, photos, and other graphics as "figures."
  • Submit all graphics as separate files, not embedded in a Word document.
  • For graphics, .jpg or .tif format is preferred. Resolution should be 150 dpi. Maximum dimensions should be 8.5 and 6.5 inches. (The editors may be able to adjust the format, resolution, and dimensions of submitted graphics files, as necessary.) Graphics may be in either color or black-and-white.
  • Each figure must have a caption and must be cited somewhere in the text. Number the figures sequentially as they are cited.
  • Figure captions should be in sentence case (e.g., Figure 1. Radiocarbon dates from seven sites in Owens Valley). Captions should preferably be brief, reserving any lengthy discussions for the text. Do not include the caption within the graphic image. List captions in Word at the end of the text document.
References Cited
  • Use authors' and editors' full names, not merely initials, unless only the initials were used in the original publication.
  • For unpublished reports, it is sufficient to list the agency or company responsible for the report and the city in which it is located, without including information cocerning to whom the report was submitted or where it is on file.
Errata
Minor errors that are identified subsequent to initial publication of an article may be corrected by notifying the Editor of the required change. If the error has been identified by someone other than the article's author, the author will be notified by the Editor prior to posting the corrected version if the author's email address is on file with SCA. The corrected version will be annotated with the date of the change (e.g., Corrected October 2009).

Comment and Rebuttal
SCA members may contribute brief, signed, professionally respectful commentaries that will be appended to Proceedings articles that have previously been published online. For instance, a comment may provide additional context on a subject, suggest alternative interpretations, or correct perceived errors in the original article. While a comment may challenge the accuracy or cogency of an article's content, it may not make derogatory statements impugning the personal competence or character of the author. A comment may not exceed 1,000 words and should follow the same formatting conventions as an article (including reference citations).

The Editor will check comments and return them to the contributor if they do not meet the requirements concerning length, content, or SCA membership. An acceptable comment will be forwarded to the original article's author (if an e-mail address for the latter is available), giving the author an opportunity to submit a rebuttal within 30 days. The author's rebuttal also may not exceed 1,000 words and must be professionally respectful. If a rebuttal is received, it will be forwarded to the comment's contributor, who will have a 30-day window within which to revise the comment (for instance, to remove particular criticisms which the author has adequately refuted) or to withdraw it. The author will then have a similar 30-day window to revise the rebuttal, and so on. Once stasis is reached, the comment and any rebuttal to it will be dated and posted on the web.

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