Just realized my field notebook method was slowing me down at a dig site outside Tucson

I've been doing archaeology for about 8 years now, but last month at a Hohokam site near Tucson I hit a wall. I was still sketching every artifact position by hand before bagging it, which took me like 15 minutes per unit. The crew lead came over, looked at my pages, and said 'you're drawing things we can photograph in 2 seconds.' So I switched to using a cheap digital camera for the overview shots and only hand-draw the tricky stratigraphy layers. That saved me almost 2 hours across a 4-day weekend dig, and I got through 3 more test pits than I planned. Has anyone else dropped the old school recording methods for a faster workflow, or am I the only one who clung to paper so long?

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seth_martinez2120d agoTop Commenter

Last summer on a survey in southern New Mexico I switched to a tablet for point data and only kept paper for profiles, cut my field time by a third. The key was being honest with myself about what actually needed a hand sketch versus what a photo could capture just fine. Now I only break out the pencil for stuff that’s truly complex, and my trowel gets way more use than my pen.