ELECTRONIC REPORT FORM
To facilitate the production of the increasingly extensive Excavations Bulletin, authors are requested to use the electronic excavation report form downloadable (with instructions) from here.
GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS SUBMITTING REPORTS TO THE EXCAVATIONS BULLETIN
Submission requirements
It is recommended that reports are submitted to the editor within six weeks of the end of the excavation but definitely no later than 31 January of the year following the year in which the work took place. The editor will not accept, except in very exceptional circumstances, a second version of a report. Please ensure that all your data are correct before sending the report. If it is absolutely necessary to send a second version, please highlight the changes made so that they will be immediately apparent to the editor. Whether you are submitting this from your office or you're submitting it from on-site using Mobile Broadband, please ensure you are submitting the work with enough time for the editor to register receipt of said work.
Reports should be sent
by e-mail as .rtf (Rich Text Format) attachments to isbennet@iol.ie,
and this should be followed up with hard copy posted to Isabel Bennett, Glen Fahan,
Ventry, Tralee, Co. Kerry. Entries in Microsoft Word on PC-compatible
disks are also acceptable if you do not have access to e-mail. If
you do not have access to a computer, typed hard copy is acceptable,
using a simple font (e.g. Times New Roman). Please note that a summary
of your work only is required.
You should ensure that your name, address and the archaeological company
for whom the work was carried out (if not for yourself) are given at the end of each
summary that you submit. The most important piece of information about the location of a non-urban site is the townland in which it is situated. Please do not give the postal address. In some cases there may be a local name for an area within a townland: this is appropriate information but is a rare occurrence. There is no need to give the town in which the nearest post office is situated! In the case of urban sites, the postal address is more relevant (e.g. 6 Main Street, Wexford), and the townland should not be included in the information.
If submitting illustrations, please
send hard copy as well as any other format used. Plans should be submitted
in black-and-white only, as colour does not always reproduce well
in a black-and-white publication. Please ensure that a scale bar is
marked on the plan. Hard-copy illustrations should be no bigger than
A3. Photographs can be submitted in any format and colour. Electronic image files may be submitted, in addition to hard copy. For halftones (e.g. photographs), these should be a minimum of 160mm wide at a resolution of 300 dots per inch. For line art (black-and-white drawings with no shading), they should be a minimum of 160mm wide at 800 dots per inch. For combination halftones (drawings with shading), they should be a minimum of 160mm wide at 500 dots per inch. The preferred file formats are TIFF, EPS or JPEG.
Technical information
Please be careful to ensure that all technical information is accurate.
It should be given in the following format:
Bridge House, 87-89 John Street Lower, Kilkenny [please do not
type the site name in uppercase using the shift or caps lock keys]
Urban medieval
J2508015570 [as accurate as possible]
SMR 19:26(01, 02) [note the format of element numbers]
99E0053 ext. [note the format]
Subheadings: Area A (left-aligned)
Please use metric units of measurement in contracted form, e.g. kilometres
(2km), metres (23m), millimetres (45mm), and hectares (3ha). If imperial
measurements must be used, please give their metric equivalents in
parentheses. Please repeat the unit of measurement in e.g. 'the enclosure
measured 20m by 15m' but not in e.g. 'a 1-2m pit'.
Use 'c.' instead of 'approximately' or 'circa': 'the
trench was c. 1m deep'.
Spell out directions: 'to the north', 'a south-west/north-east-oriented
trench'.
Dimensions with direction: in e.g. 'the trench was 12m long (north-south)
and 3m wide (east-west)', the 'east-west' is redundant and should
be omitted.
General style
Please make sure that placenames and personal names are spelled correctly
and consistently throughout and between reports.
References to reports published in previous bulletins should be to
the site number, not the page(s): 'this site was reported on in Excavations
1996, No. 34'.
Please give dates in this form: 'on 12 July 1999' (not 'on the 12th
of July, 1999' or 'on 12/7/99').
Remember to insert a closing comma after the last element of an address:
'The site was in Bailieborough, Co. Cavan, and lay on...'.
Please avoid verbosity: use 'the trench was 12m long, 2m wide and
1m deep' instead of 'the trench measured 12m in length, 2m in width
and 1m in depth'. Avoid the use of 'in advance of', 'prior to' and
'ahead of' for 'before'; 'during the course of' for 'during'; and
'consisted of' for 'was' (e.g. 'the fill consisted of a black, silty
clay').
Make sure that singular/plural nouns take the correct form of verb:
'a series of trenches was opened'.
Something may 'comprise' or 'be composed of' a number of other things
('the excavation comprised the digging of four trenches').
Use initial capital letters for, e.g., 'Test-pit 2', 'in Cuttings
5 and 6', 'Phase 3'.
Hyphenation
Please hyphenate as follows:
a 14th-century church
a north-south-aligned ditch
two 1m-wide trenches
a stone-lined pit
References
If it essential that references are included in the report, please
use the author-date format and include a References section at the
end of the report. Please supply all publication details. For journal
articles, these are author(s), year of publication, title of article,
journal title, journal volume, page span of article:
Finn, J. and Murphy, J.W. 1962 John Street: north and south sides. Old Kilkenny Review 14, 25-39.
For books, give author(s), year of publication, title of book, no.
of volumes, specific volume cited, place of publication:
Thomas, A. 1992 The walled towns of Ireland (2 vols), vol.
1. Dublin.
For individual articles in books, give author(s) of article, year
of publication, title of article, editor(s) of book, title of book,
page span of article, place of publication:
Hurley, M.F. 1997 Topography and development. In M.F. Hurley and O.M.B.
Scully (eds), Late Viking Age and medieval Waterford excavations
1986-1992, 7-11. Waterford.
