2024 Submission Guidelines
These guidelines include the following procedures and policies. The only means of submission is via the SAA Submissions Portal. If you have any questions regarding the submissions process, policies, or forms, please contact the SAA headquarters at +1 (202) 559-7382 or +1 (202) 559-5881, or e-mail meetings@saa.org.
COVID-19 Information - last updated May 8, 2023
As of May 2023, the SAA Board highly encourages attendees of the 2024 annual meeting to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but vaccinations will not be required. If CDC guidelines change before December 2023, the board will revisit this decision with due consideration of the difficulties in being vaccinated and boosted or getting a PCR test.
General Information
Deadline
All submissions, both session and individual, must be completed by Thursday, September 7, 2023, 3:00 p.m. eastern time. The submission system will shut down at that time. Staff will be available to assist prior to 3:00 p.m. As all submissions will be made via the submission system, there is no grace period nor are there any late fees. There is no flexibility to the deadline.
The submission system allows you to make changes until the submission deadline. Once the submission deadline passes, no edits may be made.
Evaluation Process
After the deadline, the Program Committee will begin evaluating each submission for substance of contribution. After reviewing a submission, the Program Committee may recommend changes. Any such recommendations are based on the nature of the material to be presented, including possible ethical issues or sensitivities, and do not reflect a low ranking by the committee. The Program Committee may request that individual papers or an entire session be converted to poster format.
The Program Committee’s decision to accept or decline the submission will be emailed to individual contributors and chairs of symposia, forums, and poster sessions by December 2023.
Please note that a submission approved by the Program Committee may be later modified or canceled by the Society for any reason upon written notice to the member.
Languages
Submissions (and presentations) may be made in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French. Abstracts will be published in the language in which they are submitted. For those authors who also wish to publish an English translation of their abstracts, please email the English translation to meetings@saa.org.
NEW FOR 2024 - the Southeast Session Series
In order to celebrate the wealth of archaeological research taking place around New Orleans and the greater US Southeast, the SAA Board is pleased to announce the Southeast Session Series, a programmatic initiative to create sessions focusing on the region that are minimally or ideally entirely nonoverlapping. The program committee encourages anyone interested in organizing a session for the series to submit a session title with an asterisk (*) before the title in the online submission system. Organized entrants in the Southeast Session Series will be specially marked in the SAA 2024 meeting program so that conference attendees can easily identify them.
Submission Policies
Registration Requirement
All presenters, chairs, moderators, and discussants are required to pay the established registration fee for the Annual Meeting before the submission deadline. This fee does not include SAA membership dues.
For participants who prefer not to pay using the web-based payment system, there is an option to print a summary form and mail your payment to the SAA. Payments must be received and processed before a session or individual paper is eligible to submit for review.
The Society reserves the right to modify or cancel any submission at any time upon written notice to the member.
Membership Requirement
It is a privilege of membership to be a participant in the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Participants in the SAA’s 2024 Annual Meeting must hold a 2024 membership in the Society.
Nonmembers:
Nonmembers must join the SAA between August 1 and no later than November 15. To join, use the same log-in and password created to access the meeting submission system. Should a submission from a current nonmember be rejected by the Program Committee, that individual can receive a full refund of the membership fee.
Current members:
Current members must renew by the close of the grace period on January 30, 2024. The SAA does not begin accepting payments for the following year until after August 1. If you do not renew your membership by the close of the grace period on January 30, 2024, the SAA Board of Directors will reject the pending submission.
If the SAA Board rejects a submission for noncompliance with the membership requirement, ethics requirement, or for any other reason, that action would supersede any action from the Program Committee. Should a submission be rejected by the Board of Directors for noncompliance with the membership requirement by the stated deadlines (November 15, 2023, for nonmembers to join and January 30, 2024, for current members to renew), the registration fee will be refunded minus a $25 processing fee.
An individual who is invited to participate in an organized session (as a presenter or discussant) at the Annual Meeting in order to present information for the benefit of SAA members and who is neither an archaeologist nor a professional in a field whose members would normally belong to the SAA may have the membership requirement waived for one annual meeting. The participants registration fee should also be reduced to the member rate in the submissions portal; in rare instances, and only for the most compelling reasons, the registration fee may be waived entirely.
Waiver requests must be submitted by the session chair via the submissions portal. Session chairs must provide the profession of those individuals for whom a membership waiver is being requested. No one trained in archaeology, archaeologists, nor archaeology students are eligible for waivers at any time.
If the chair was unable to submit the membership waiver via the submissions portal, please submit the waiver request using this form by November 1st.
Decisions under this policy will be made by the Executive Director.
SAA Principles of Archaeological Ethics
All presenters, chairs, moderators, and discussants are required to read and check the checkbox on the Abstract Submission page, which, among other things, certifies that the proposed submission conforms to the SAA Principles of Archaeological Ethics. All submissions must uphold the SAA Principles of Archaeological Ethics.
Images of Human Remains
The SAA recognizes that images of human remains have the potential to be offensive and unsettling to some members of our community and those communities with whom we work. We ask that presenters please indicate whether or not their presentation includes such images in an effort to create a more respectful environment for all.
Meeting Safety Policy and Code of Conduct
Everyone is entitled to a safe and harassment-free experience when participating in SAA activities. The SAA understands that participation at its events is an important part of career development and affirms the values of respect, equity, multicultural pluralism, and nondiscrimination at these gatherings. Harassment harms the individual. Harassment also damages the SAA community by discouraging participation in SAA events and compromising the exchange of ideas that is at the center of the SAA’s mission to promote and stimulate interest and research in the archaeology of the Americas and beyond.
Because of the importance of the meeting to career development and concerns at the Society about inclusion of marginalized groups in the Society’s events, the SAA has elected in this Policy to give priority to survivors of harassment and assault and to ensure their ability to participate freely in SAA events.
Meeting participants are required to follow the Code of Conduct and the SAA Meeting Safety Policy.
Withdrawals
Registration fees for presenters who elect to withdraw from the program will be refunded by the SAA office—minus a $25 processing fee—upon receipt of e-mailed or written request (no verbal requests, please) postmarked by December 1, 2023.