Problem with the new Society for American Archaeology (SAA) style

TVM86 · February 4, 2025

Hello everyone!

I just noticed that the SAA style was updated yesterday—thank you so much for keeping it up to date! I really appreciate the effort that goes into maintaining it.

However, I noticed something curious: in the bibliography, the title seems to be appearing twice—once right after the authors and then again after the date. Is it possible that I’ve set something up incorrectly, or could it be a bug in the code?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you all for being part of such an amazing community.

Warmly,
Tatiana

damnation · February 4, 2025

The SAA style was developed by us together with the SAA folks and was signed off by them.
Can you give a concrete example and also show the input of the data in Zotero? Then I'll look tomorrow first thing.

Edit: Found my error. PR: https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/7427

TVM86 · February 4, 2025

Hello :)

Thank you for your quick response!

Here’s the data I’ve entered into Zotero:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14552778/2aohv0zax6mty00s4dwl.png

And this is how it appears in Word:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14552778/rmgl8tafqm7lx4pdimv2.png

I really appreciate you taking the time to look into this issue!

Best regards,
Tatiana

blanning · February 4, 2025

I'm having the exact same problem. It's also including the DOI now. Is the new SAA style guidance to include the DOI, or is that an error?

blanning · February 4, 2025

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u9507450/n4urczvm9u8w5vgqu5bu.jpg
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u9507450/7yunq5f1cxrssm6kf01i.jpg
Here are images of a normal zotero input, and the output we just started getting. The duplicated title is underlined.

damnation · February 5, 2025

As I said above, I already provided a fix last night. Once it's merged it will be available.

The DOI was indeed introduced in this version of the guidelines.

blanning · February 5, 2025

I saw that. My apologies, by the time you had posted your comment I had already posted mine and they were awaiting approval from the mods, so there was nothing I could do to stop them being posted. I really appreciate the prompt attention and thanks so much for keeping the style up to date. I do see now where the DOIs are now required for online sources. I'll keep an eye out for the merge and thank you again!

damnation · February 5, 2025

The style was just merged, thanks to bwiernik!

TVM86 · February 5, 2025

Hello!

Thank you so much for your help—it's truly appreciated!

Is there anything specific I need to do to see the changes, or should I just wait for them to appear?

Best,
Tatiana

damnation · February 5, 2025

You can wait, yes, or just grab the style from here: https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=id:society-for-american-archaeology

TVM86 · February 5, 2025

Thanks :)

blanning · February 6, 2025

As a follow up, there looks to be another bug with the in-text references. Now for multiple author resources it is including up to three names. So for a 3-author report, it is including all three names, and for references with more than three authors it is including three names and then "et al." I confirmed in the SAA style guide that three or more authors are supposed to appear as the first author's name followed by et al. An example of what is currently occurring is provided here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u9507450/ztopow0c0r6nq3x5m4qz.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u9507450/5ohmb51vejdab00vn7y2.png

damnation · February 7, 2025

Thanks.
I am not sure why I added that change to the new version and why it was caught during the review as I cannot find anything in my emails with SAA about it. The style had been signed off by them. PR is made:
https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/7431

TVM86 · February 14, 2025

Hi there!

I’ve been using the new SAA style and noticed that when there are multiple references from the same author, the author’s name isn’t being repeated. According to the SAA style guide:

"Two or more works by the same author or authors should be listed chronologically (repeating author name[s] for each entry)"

At the moment, it appears like this:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14552778/3q0as6tm2n8e1w6g7nk8.png

But based on the SAA style, it should look like this:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14552778/9lt8fbbjk86363s0tvca.png

Would someone be able to take a look at this? I’d really appreciate any help!

Thanks so much in advance!

Best,
Tatiana

damnation · February 15, 2025

Thanks for spotting the error.
Fixed: https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/7438

TVM86 · February 18, 2025

Thank you so much!!!

cmbarton · September 14, 2025

I just now tried to install this into Zotero 7. It returned this unhelpful error:

An unexpected error occurred while installing "/Users/cmbarton/Downloads/society-for-american-archaeology.csl"

I tried it from the online style library and directly from GitHub

damnation · September 14, 2025

You don't need to do anything like downloading it and you're most likely already using the latest version.
If not, just have Zotero open and click on it here: https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=Saa

JHPerryWSP · 2026-02-03T13:32:15+00:00

Hello, my job requires me to use SAA so I'm learning the ropes of this style after years of Chicago notes-bibliography. I've been having issues with publication as author entries and articles that only provide mm-yyyy rather than dd-mm-yyyy. Here is one example where I have an unauthored article from Railway Age and you can see that the citation generated contains extra spacing. When entering the same data for Chicago notes-bibliography, the program seems to automatically shift the publication to the author, can the same be done for SAA?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u16135988/m8p3orxt4y3fvc7c3dhm.png

You can see in the second example my workaround to include publication as author, but I've had to add a command to italicize the title. Also, this publication only provided the month and year so there's an extra space. Again, in Chicago notes-bibliography, it does not seem to be an issue if the date is only month-year or day-month-year.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u16135988/3cpjtod14n3y9izk3a4g.png

Are there ways to have the SAA style be more flexible when entering this data? My workaround is pretty clumsy and time-consuming and it will not help if I have to provide the same source in a different style since I'd have to reenter fields.