ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended to help beginners, as well as experienced archaeologists, use existing maps, design and construct site control grids, and draft archaeological maps. In addition, we will discuss various types of mapping tools, from tape and compass to advanced electronic surveying systems. We acknowledge that not all readers may have access to some types of advanced instruments, but they might have older, still fully functional equipment. With this in mind, we will review the operation of some of the traditional mapping tools—the plane table and alidade, Abney level, and standard transit—and we will discuss sophisticated Global Positioning and total station surveying systems. In any case, it won’t be long, we suspect, before a great deal of today’s “advanced” equipment will also be—archaeologically speaking—“archaic.”
