Current Swedish Archaeology (CSA) is a peer-reviewed journal focusing primarily on the interpretation of the archaeological record and on archaeology as social practice. The aim of the journal is to make findings and discussions in Swedish and wider Nordic archaeology accessible to non-Scandinavian speaking readers in and outside of the region and to promote contact and debate between Swedish archaeology and the larger international field. Learn more >>
Submission Guidelines
How to write for CSA
These guidelines are also availible as pdf for download.
Research articles
(i) Your full manuscript should be submitted before the end of March unless another deadline has been specified. The manuscript must be in good English and include a list of references. The document should be submitted via the platform a file in .doc format. Please send the text unformatted. Illustrations must be sent as separate files in appropriate formats (see below).
(ii) The manuscript will be read by the editors and a reviewer from the editorial board. If suitable, it will then be sent to at least two peer reviewers. CSA works with a double-blind peer review system, where the author and the reviewer are anonymous to each other. If the reviewers recommend the manuscript for publication, it will be returned with comments to the author for revision.
(iii) After completion of requested changes, the new version should uploaded. The text and references must comply fully with the CSA style guide. Professional language editing is required at this point (see below). The checked manuscript will be sent back to the author for approval. After the author has accepted the revisions the text is considered ready for layout, and no further substantial changes or additions to the text will be accepted.
(iv) After layout the author will receive a proof, where only minor and typographical corrections are allowed.
(v) The print version of Current Swedish Archaeology is normally distributed in December. From 2024, the journal aims at publishing research articles online as soon as they are accepted. The research articles will appear in print, usually in December, along with book reviews, key notes, responses to keynotes, other notes and lastly the editorial section. CSA is an Open Access Journal published under the terms of the Creative Commons 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Book reviews
CSA publishes reviews of books on Nordic topics or emanating from Nordic research which may be of interest for a wider international readership. Please contact the editors if you would like to suggest a book for review. Unsolicited review copies will not be returned.
Copyright and charges
Authors retain the copyright of their work, with first publication rights granted to the Swedish Archaeological Society.
There are no charges for authors. The journal is supported by the Swedish Archaeological Society, the Swedish Research Council and its subscribers. The editorial work is carried out on a voluntary basis.
Language
The language of Current Swedish Archaeology is English. Only manuscripts written in English will be considered for publication. CSA requires that papers receive professional language revision. The editors can recommend suitable editing services. Costs depend on the length of articles and the standard of the original text.
Please use British English. Note: the Oxford English Dictionary often favours ‘-ize’ spellings (e.g. colonize, civilization). When in doubt, consult the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors or the online Oxford English Dictionary.
Length
Each volume of CSA usually contains five different types of text: (i) Invited keynote article, (ii) invited keynote responses, (iii) Research articles, (iv) Notices, and (v) Reviews of recent publications or exhibitions. The keynote article and research articles must not exceed 50 000 characters, spaces included. Keynote responses must not exceed 10 000 characters, spaces included. Notices must not exceed 4000 characters, and reviews must not exceed 7 000 characters, spaces included.
If the text contains many and/or large illustrations, the length of the text should be adjusted accordingly. A suggested placing of the illustrations should be marked in the text. Figure captions should be listed after the reference list, at the end of the manuscript.
Article and author details
For articles and the keynote article, please include the following at the top of the first page, listed as follows:
- Title (a single level heading is preferred, but two levels are accepted)
- Name (or names) of the author(s)
- Abstract (no longer than 200 words)
- Keywords (no more than ten)
- Postal address(es) for the author(s)
- ORCiD ID
Subheadings
Two levels of sub-headings are allowed.
Acknowledgements may be included as a separate subheading at the end of the article, before references.
Footnotes
Please use footnotes not endnotes, and those sparingly. Footnotes should be indicated in the text by superscript numbers after punctuation, i.e. after any comma or full stop. Superscripts should go at the end of the sentence, unless they directly reference a concept in the middle of a sentence.
Abbreviations
Titles: a full stop is not used if the abbreviation ends with the last letter of the actual word, so Dr not Dr., Mr not Mr., but Prof. for Professor.
Dates: abbreviations such as kyr, kya and ka should not be used (40,000 BP instead).
Please write out &, > and < , %, e.g., etc., i.e. and so on in the text.
Ibid., op. cit., ff and similar are not allowed.
Numbers and Measurements
Numbers: under 10 should be written out in full (e.g. two), numbers 10 and over should be listed in digits.
Measurements: should be metric wherever possible.
Units: should not be preceded by a space, e.g. 700km.
Dates
Commas: no commas in thousands of years old, but there are commas in tens of thousands of years old, e.g. 4500 BC and 12,000 BP.
Uncalibrated dates: are denoted bc or bp (e.g. 4000 bc), while calibrated dates are noted thus: 3500 BC. Radiocarbon dates should include laboratory number and plus/minus values.
Decades: 1960s, i.e. without an apostrophe.
Abbreviated Decades: spelled out, e.g. ‘the Sixties’ and not ‘the 60s’. The decade is always capitalised.
Centuries or millennia: must be spelled out, e.g. fourth century CE or third millennium BCE, but 400 BCE and 600 CE.
Million Years Ago: may be abbreviated (to MYA).
Punctuation
Titles of books, journals and films should be in italic.
Serial commas should not be used; Oxford commas are deployed only where necessary, e.g. apples, pears and peaches.
Quotations
Single quotation marks are used throughout both for direct quotes and to indicate concepts, e.g. ‘complex’ societies. The exception is when a quote or ‘concept’ appears within a quote, when double quotation marks are used.
If the quote starts with a capital letter in the original version, it should do so in the quotation.
Indented Quotes: quotes longer than one line (or multiple sentences. Basically, anything over 50 words) should be inset:
Both examples…naturalised (Orser 2007:181).
Note that there is a line space before and after the quote and that no quote marks are used.
Where the author has been named in the sentence preceding the quote, the full reference should be in the sentence as opposed to the quote, e.g.
As noted by Salzman (2002:245):
By means…empirically.
Illustrations
The number of illustrations allowed depends on the length of the manuscript and the size of the illustrations. Normally 5-8 illustrations and/or tables are accepted. Maximum width 112mm and length 191mm for the illustrations. All illustrations, tables and diagrams should be numbered consecutively. They should be submitted as digital originals of high quality, in high resolution (minimum 300 dpi in the final print size). The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred). Plans and maps preferable as eps or ai.
Since CSA is printed in B/W, use B/W or greyscale in all illustrations.
A suggested placing of the illustrations, tables and diagrams should be marked in the text. The illustrations should however not be pasted in the manuscript, but be sent as separate files. All illustrations, tables and diagrams must have short, descriptive captions including their attribution where relevant. These captions should be listed after the reference list, at the end of the manuscript. The figures should be referred to in the text as (figure 1), tables as (table 1). Use this format for the captions:
Figure 1. Title.
Table 1. Title.
References
CSA employs a Harvard style of referencing.
Citations within the text:
In-text citations should follow this format:
An internal chronological division of the Bronze Age was published 1885 (Montelius 1885).
Multiple citation at once: Should be placed alphabethically and should be separated by semicolon, e.g. (Chapman 1997:1–12: Montelius 1885:13).
Multiple authors: two authors should be cited with ‘&’, e.g. (Hodder & Orton 1978:59, 62–63). However, three or more authors should be cited with ‘et al.’ e.g. (Allentoft et al. 1992).
Multiple works by the same author should be listed with the author’s name and dates written in order and separated by a comma. If citing another author at the same time, a semicolon is used, e.g. (Rudebeck 1986, 1998; Rosberg & Sarnäs 1995, 1997).
Multiple works by the same author in the same year should be identified using a and b, e.g. (Sofaer Derevenski 2000a, 2000b).
If the author is named in the sentence the year should be cited directly after the author’s name, e.g. ‘Montelius (1885:22) states that …’
Reference list
The name and city of the publisher should be included for all monographs and page numbers for all articles in edited volumes and journals. Titles of monographs and journals should be in italics.
The list of references should be formatted exactly as follows:
Please add doi for those article that have doi’s they will be added to the online version of the text.
Journal Articles
Childe, V. G. 1958. Retrospect. Antiquity. Vol. 32 pp. 69–74.
Marzinzik, S. 2014. An Outstanding Hoard of Gold Objects Deposited in the Late Saxon Period. Medieval Archaeology. Vol. 58(1) pp. 256-269, doi:10.1179/0076609714Z.00000000037.
Articles with more than 6 authors.
Allentoft, M.E., Sikora, M., [...] Kristiansen, K. & Willerslev, E. 2015. Population Genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia. Nature. Vol. 522(7555) pp. 167–172.
Chapter in Book
Kjellström, A. 2014. Interpreting Violence: a Bioarchaeological Perspective of Violence from Medieval Central Sweden. In: Knüsel, C. & Smith M.J. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict, pp. 237–250. London: Routledge.
Authored Books
Arrhenius, B. 2020. Forntidsliv i Vendel: från fiskeläge till hövdingasäte. Stockholm: Arkeologiska forskningslaboratoriet, Stockholms universitet.
Kristiansen, K. & Larsson, T. B. 2005. The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edited Book
Malmlöf, M. (ed). 2013. Förmedlingens möjligheter: Några framtidsperspektiv på uppdragsarkeologi. Rapport 2013:5. Stockholm: Länsstyrelsen i Stockholm län.
Nicklasson, P. & Petersson, B. (eds). 2012. Att återupptäcka det glömda: Aktuell forskning om forntidens förflutna i Norden. Acta Archaeologica Lundensia Series Prima in 4º, No. 32. Lund: Lund University.
Please note that personal communications should be placed in a separate list after the references.
Internet sources
If named author please state the author’s last name and the year or n.d. if not dated. If author not named please state the publisher of the webpage or the name of the webpage e.g. (Riksantikvarieämbetet n.d.) or (FMIS).
Webpages with authors:
Gustavson, H. 2013. Gotlands runinskrifter 3. www.raa.kulturarvet/arkeologi-fornlämningar-oc-fynd/runstenar/digitala-sveriges-runinskrifter/gotlands-runinskrifter-3/. [Accessed 3 October 2014]
Webpages without authors:
Sandby Borg project. www.sandbyborg.se. [Accessed 6 September 2017]
Personal communication:
Name of the source, place of work, type of communication [e-mail, telephone, or presentation], Month and year.
