Field Manual Archive

There are a number of ways to examine and manipulate data in ARK. It is important to note that the system is still under development at this stage. These tools will be changing in the coming months as we...

The process of digitising differs widely from larger excavations, evaluations, watching briefs, and the like. Larger excavations such as Villa Magna will most often entail a data entry stage at the beginning of the process, to ensure all plans/sections...

The Data Entry system of ARK is defined to mirror the paper record as closely as possible, making data entry and viewing highly intuitive. As such, users entering excavation or evaluation data should not require advanced training or user...

Philosophy of ARK Archaeological recording practices vary from site to site, throughout the world. Each system is developed to address site-specific questions and to satisfy individual research agendas. This should be encouraged and embraced—recording systems should be easily adaptable...

Human Remains If you find human remains, find Cori BEFORE excavating, recording or removing them. A major aim of the project is to excavate fully the medieval cemetery and to train volunteers in the principles of cemetery excavation and...

In the early 1970s, Edward Harris, excavating at the pluri-stratified site of Winchester in England, added a valuable refinement to the schematic drawings that record stratigraphic sequence. Within the logic of an excavation, the purpose of a section drawing...

How excavators handle the objects they find is critical to the knowledge they can give us, and to the survival of the objects in a state at least as good as they enjoyed underground. The aim is to transfer...

Almost all contexts are photographed when they are clean and defined. Take care to make the edges of the context very clearly defined. If a major photograph is planned it is best to warn Lisa in advance, so that...

The drawing of detailed and comprehensive plans and sections is a fundamental part of the recording of archaeological excavations. In the past excavations only recorded archaeological features which were considered to be important at the time of the excavation,...

Each Field Director has a register of SUs, for each area. These are books with a simple list, in numerical order, of the contexts excavated. There is a single sequence for SUs, SSUs and HRUs. First, decide if the...