Archaeological field documentation is not glamorous work.

It involves recording precise measurements, writing detailed descriptions of context and association, photographing each significant feature and object, and producing the kind of systematic record that allows researchers who were not present at the excavation to understand, decades later, exactly what was found and where it was found.

Good documentation is a form of scientific generosity — an investment of time and care that benefits not just the immediate research project but every subsequent researcher who engages with the same material.

Poor documentation, by contrast, is a permanent loss: when the context of a discovery is not recorded, the information that context contained is gone forever, even if the physical objects themselves survive.