The Provenance Gap
In professional archaeology, a site isn't just a collection of potsherds and stone tools; it's a non-renewable data source. If you record a site in the Arizona desert but fail to document the Topographic setting, the specific Soils (Ash, Burned, Clay), or the Estimated artifact density, you aren't an archaeologist; you're just a looter with a degree. The complexity of cultural resource management—balancing Affiliation with Site condition—means that if you don't have a granular, GPS-verified record of every Field Site No, you are losing the context that makes the artifacts meaningful. A lost Site sketch or a vague memory of the Disturbances (Vandalism, Pothunting, Erosion) can render an entire field season academically useless.
This template is a digital технічний record for the field researcher. It replaces the fragile paper forms with a high-fidelity database that captures the physical and cultural DNA of every site, ensuring that your data meets the highest standards of professional audit.
The Daily Reality: The Characterization Matrix
The brilliance of this system is its focus on evidentiary confidence. It doesn't just ask for an assessment; it forces you to rate your Affiliation confidence, Age confidence, and Density confidence. This distinction is critical for peer review and mitigation planning. You stop logging "guesses" and start logging "falsifiable findings." The template breaks down the Artifacts observed into a granular multichoice list—from Prehistoric Ceramic to Fire cracked rock—allowing for instant quantitative analysis of the site's profile.
The environmental fields—Slope, Facing, and Vegetation ID confidence—provide the necessary context for site formation processes. Knowing the Deposition Process (Wind, Water, Gravity) allows you to hypothesize the depth of the cultural deposits before you even break ground. The inclusion of NRHP Eligibility criteria (A through D) transforms the record from a physical description into a legal and administrative finding. You aren't just "finding a site"; you are conducting a professional characterization that determines the future of that landscape.
The Data Payoff: Cultural Resource Management
After a season of field documentation, the Site recording complete? boolean and the Site narrative field become your primary reporting tools. You can instantly run a report on every "Eligible" site within a specific Project area or analyze the volume of Pothunting disturbances across a region. This isn't just a list of sites; it's a management engine for heritage conservation. You move from reacting to construction alerts to proactively managing a multi-site research pipeline, providing a level of technical integrity that builds your institution's reputation and protects the archaeological record. You move from "seeing the past" to "proving its significance."