Eleven Paste Types, One Deposit, No Ambiguity
The Paste field in this template carries eleven controlled vocabulary options before you ever reach the free-text overflow. That precision is not academic pedantry. In a historic-period deposit with mixed assemblage character—say, a nineteenth-century Nevada mining camp midden with both Chinese and Euro-American occupants—the difference between Chinese Porcelain and Chinese Fine Stoneware is a temporal marker, a trade network indicator, and a socioeconomic signal compressed into a single classification. Recording it as "porcelain (white, thin)" in a field notebook creates noise at the site-report stage. Recording it as Chinese Fine Stoneware in a controlled vocabulary that survives unchanged from field entry to database query creates signal.
The free-text overflow fields—"Paste (not in list)", "Glaze/Slip (not in list)", "Decorative Technique (not in list)", "Pattern (not in list)", "Vessel Form (not in list)"—exist because the list is not exhaustive. Salt glaze appears in the Glaze/Slip options; Nottingham-style salt glaze that has been partially reduced and reads brown rather than gray does not. The overflow field captures that detail without breaking the controlled vocabulary for the four hundred other records in the database where the standard term applies perfectly.
Density Numbers That Actually Mean Something
The Density/m² field is the one that most desktop-only archaeological databases get wrong by omitting it. Count alone—fourteen sherds from Feature 3—tells you nothing about depositional behavior without knowing the excavation unit area. Density normalizes the count to a comparable unit and lets you map concentration across loci without rebuilding the math in the lab.
This field pairs with the Inventory Type selector—Site, Feature, Locus, Concentration—and the corresponding F/L/C Number to create a complete spatial hierarchy. A sherd density of 42/m² in Locus 7 of Feature 2 can be cross-referenced against density figures from adjacent loci to identify whether the scatter is primary deposition, secondary redeposition from a disturbed context, or a discrete dump episode with sharp edges.
UTM coordinates sit at the bottom of the record, available when sub-locus precision is needed for GIS point plotting. Not every sherd gets UTMs. But when you have a concentration of Canton-pattern Chinese Porcelain clustering against the east wall of a structure whose western extent is defined by Albany Slip American Utility Stoneware, the UTM pairs with the count and density to tell a story about room function that the artifact catalog alone cannot.
The Trademark Field and What It Costs to Skip It
The Description/Trademark/Comments field is the most underrated entry in the checklist. Manufacturer's marks on refined earthenware are terminus post quem evidence with publication dates—Wedgwood's impressed mark variants have been systematically dated, Staffordshire potters' registration marks run from 1842 onward, and some American manufacturers maintained continuous operation for short windows that tightly bracket deposition dates. Recording the trademark description—even a partial one, even on a base fragment with only three of the four cartouche elements present—preserves data that cannot be recovered once the artifact is catalogued and bagged.
The Decorative Technique field distinguishes transfer-print from decal. To a generalist this looks like a minor distinction. To a ceramics specialist it is a manufacturing technology divide: transfer-printing on ceramic predates the 1890s; decal application is predominantly post-1890. A deposit that yields both techniques in the same context requires explanation—whether that is bioturbation, mixed deposition, or a long-occupation site where the assemblage spans the technology transition. You cannot begin that analysis if your field records do not make the distinction.
Flow Blue, Gaudy Dutch, Willow Pattern, Canton, Featheredge—the Pattern field controlled vocabulary maps to the published type literature without requiring the recorder to memorize the citations. The Bamboo, Three Circles and Dragonfly option and the Four Seasons, Four Flowers option cover the two most common Chinese export patterns encountered on California and Nevada sites from the Transcontinental Railroad era through the early twentieth century. When those appear in a deposit context with Chinese Brown Glaze stoneware utility vessels, the assemblage signature becomes legible across sites and projects without re-analysis at the synthesis stage.