Do I need page numbers for paraphrases?

Page numbers are required for direct quotes. For paraphrases, they're optional but recommended when referencing a specific argument or passage. General references to an entire work don't need page numbers.

What about sources in other languages?

Cite sources in their original language. You may add a translation of the title in brackets after the original: Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. La pensée sauvage [The savage mind]. Paris: Plon. (Edition verified in the Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogue, ark:/12148/cb33078483s.)

Is AAA the same as Chicago style?

Almost. AAA follows Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition, author-date system. The main AAA-specific conventions are using “References Cited” as your heading and following American spelling. For anything not specified by AAA, use Chicago author-date rules.

How do I cite fieldwork and interviews?

Personal communications, including fieldwork interviews, are cited in-text only—they don't appear in your list of sources. Because they are unpublished, the format is a template rather than a worked example: (fieldwork interview, [Month Year]) or ([Initial] [Surname], personal communication, [Month Day, Year]). For published oral histories or archived interviews, create a full reference entry.

How do I handle sources with no author?

For institutional authors, use the organization's name in the author position: [Organization Name]. [Year]. For truly anonymous works, begin with the title and alphabetize by the first significant word (ignore A, An, The).

How to Cite in AAA Style: Anthropology Citation Guide

Quick Overview: AAA Citation Format

AAA (American Anthropological Association) style is the citation format used across anthropology. The AAA's own style guide sits behind a Cloudflare challenge that blocks automated access, so the rule this page rests on comes from a university library guide that reproduces it: University of Toronto Libraries states that "American Anthropology Association (AAA) style follows the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), 17th Edition" and that "AAA style uses the author-date system."

Important update: Vanderbilt University Library's anthropology guide records that "AAA journals now use free-format submission, which means that submitted manuscripts do not have to follow any particular style guidelines. Formatting and style changes will be handled during the copyediting stage." For coursework, theses, and final published versions, the formats below still apply — and individual journals still publish their own requirements.

Key features of AAA style:

Author-date in-text citations: (Author Year) or (Author Year, page)
An alphabetized list of sources at the end. Chicago's author-date system calls this the reference list; many anthropology journals and departments ask for the heading References Cited instead, so check your journal's or supervisor's instructions.
Based on Chicago author-date (not notes-bibliography)

In-Text Citations in AAA

AAA uses parenthetical author-date citations placed before the period.

Basic format:

The culture concept has been contested within the discipline for decades (Wolf 1984).

With page number (for quotes or specific claims) — a comma after the year, then the page:

The journal's former coeditors put the case plainly: "If anything made Cultural Anthropology different from other journals in anthropology, it was its openness to more open forms of writing" (Fortun and Fortun 2015, 360).

Author named in text:

Malinowski (1922) set out the case for long-term participant observation.

Two authors:

Missionary encounters reshaped colonial subjectivities in southern Africa (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991).

Three or more authors — name the first author and add "et al.":

Structural violence constrains what clinical medicine can achieve (Farmer et al. 2006).

Multiple sources — separate with semicolons:

The culture concept has a long argumentative history in the discipline (Boas 1911; Benedict 1934; Wolf 1984).

No author — begin with the title, or with the organization if one is responsible. Shown here as a template, since the format depends on your source:

("[Title of Work]" [Year])

No date — some archival sources carry none:

([Author] n.d.)

Reference List Format

The list appears at the end of your paper, alphabetized by the first author's last name, under the heading your journal or department asks for ("References Cited" in many anthropology venues, "References" in Chicago's own author-date examples).

General formatting:

Last name, First name. Year. Title. Place: Publisher.
Hanging indent for entries longer than one line

Note one point of drift: Chicago's 18th edition no longer requires a city of publication, while AAA style as the library guides describe it is pinned to the 17th, which does. The examples below keep the place of publication; drop it if your journal follows CMOS 18.

Reference Examples by Source Type

Every example below is a real, published work, checked against Crossref, Open Library, DataCite or the publisher's own record. The audit log for this page lists the exact record consulted for each one.

Books

Single author:

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Two authors:

Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Edited volume:

Marcus, George E., ed. 1999. Critical Anthropology Now: Unexpected Contexts, Shifting Constituencies, Changing Agendas. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Chapter in edited volume:

Asad, Talal. 1986. "The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology." In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 141–164. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Journal Articles

Print journal:

Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. "Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties." Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1): 126–166.

Online journal with DOI:

Fortun, Kim, and Mike Fortun. 2015. "An Infrastructural Moment in the Human Sciences." Cultural Anthropology 30(3): 359–367. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca30.3.01

Other Sources

Dissertation:

Martin, David Fernandes. 1993. "Autonomy and Relatedness: An Ethnography of Wik People of Aurukun, Western Cape York Peninsula." PhD thesis, Australian National University. https://doi.org/10.25911/5d763278522cb

Online essay or web page — give the series, the site, the date and the URL. This is the form the journal itself publishes in its "Cite As" line for the essay:

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. "Salvage Accumulation, or the Structural Effects of Capitalist Generativity." Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, March 30. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/salvage-accumulation-or-the-structural-effects-of-capitalist-generativity

Film or documentary — give the director, year, title, and distributor. The shape is:

[Surname], [First name], dir. [Year]. [Title]. [Place]: [Distributor].

Interview/Fieldwork — personal communications and fieldwork interviews are cited in text only, never in the reference list. Because these sources are by nature unpublished, the format is shown as a template:

([Initial] [Surname], personal communication, [Month Year]) or (fieldwork interview, [Month Year]).

AAA vs. Chicago: What's Different?

Very little, at the level of the citation itself. The University of Toronto guide describes AAA style simply as Chicago author-date, 17th edition. What varies is local practice rather than a separate rulebook:

The heading on the list of sources ("References Cited" is common in anthropology; Chicago's own author-date examples use "References").
Fieldwork and personal communications, which anthropology cites in text only.
Individual journals, which may add their own house requirements on top.

For any formatting question the guides above don't answer, defer to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition.

Common AAA Mistakes to Avoid

Using notes-bibliography Chicago: AAA uses author-date, not footnotes. Don't use superscript numbers for citations.
Guessing at the list heading: check whether your journal or department wants "References Cited" or "References" — don't assume.
Inconsistent author formatting: invert the first author's name only. Write "Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff," not "Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John L."
Missing access dates for websites: include "Accessed [date]" for online sources without stable DOIs or publication dates.
Italicizing article titles: only book and journal titles are italicized. Article and chapter titles use regular font.

Citation Tools for AAA

Chicago Manual of Style Online – the authoritative source for AAA style rules
Zotero – free reference manager with AAA/Chicago output style
Mendeley – citation manager with anthropology journal styles
Wonders – research workspace for organizing ethnographic sources and literature

References

American Anthropological Association. "Publishing Style Guide." https://americananthro.org/publications/publishing-style-guide/ — the canonical source, but it returns HTTP 403 to automated requests, so nothing on this page is attributed to it.
University of Toronto Libraries. "AAA Citation Style." Research Guides. https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=250705&p=5198639 — source of the CMOS 17th edition / author-date rule quoted above.
Vanderbilt University Library. "Anthropology Citation Styles." Research Guides. https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/anthropology/ANTH-Citations — source of the free-format submission note.
Chicago Manual of Style Online. Citation Quick Guide (author-date examples). https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html