Documentation and Field Reports

All archaeology is only as good as the documentation that accompanies it.  Archaeological fieldwork is inherently destructive and the archaeological record is a non-renewable resource. This means that we only get one shot to excavate something and once we have the context, provenience, and associations are gone from the world existing only in our minds, what we write down, and our photographs.  This is one reason that looting, illegal stealing of archaeological materials, is so destructive. Artifacts themselves are not nearly as important as the context in which they are found.  Looters are only interested in the flashy, profitable objects and so they destroy the archaeological record destroying context, provenience, and associations without recording it.

Documentation is how we not only preserve the past but learn from it and share that knowledge with the world. Our 2011 field season at Ceren was extraordinarily successful. We have written a field report that outlines all of our findings and the most important aspects of our 2011 research.  Given the importance of documentation we leave the last week of the field season for writing reports and submitting all artifacts to the national museum. This report is submitted to the government of El Salvador and is available in English and Spanish. We will turn these chapters into further publications in academic journals and presentations at academic conferences.  Take a look and let me know if you have any questions!

CEREN 2011 FIELD PROJECT FINAL REPORT:
http://www.colorado.edu/anthropology/people/bios/documents/THEREPORT2011_001.pdf