ABSTRACT
While the preferred option for the archaeological record is usually preservation in situ, the realities of modern life dictate that many archaeological sites are destroyed each year. The increased pressures on the historic environment, both above and below ground, from urban development and changing agricultural and forestry methods have focused a large proportion of archaeological activity into preservation by record, i.e. excavation. The excavation of a site is often thought of as an unrepeatable experiment and as such the importance of recording can not be over stated. Recording methods have developed and changed over the years to produce the systems and ideas in use today. The modern approach to excavation recording is to link, as logically as possible, all of the disparate elements of an excavated site within a three-dimensional recording framework, an aim that sits comfortably within the moves towards data richness described in Chapter 1. Some would argue that this should allow the virtual reconstruction of the site based on the records, although excavation is by no means a precise science and considerable room for ambiguity and interpretation has to be allowed within any recording system. It is within a framework of evolving recording methods that computers have gained favour with many excavators to the extent that some recent excavation recording systems are designed to be solely computer-based.
