Page 274 - Manual for Activities directed at the Underwater Cultural Heritage

XII. Reporting
Reporting, the archiving of data and finds, and dissemination of search results are daily routines that begin with the first day
of work in archaeology. Although the Annex only addresses these issues towards the end, reporting should be addressed from the very beginning of any archaeological project. Rules 30 and Rule 31 deal with reporting. Rule 32, Rule 33 and Rule 34 have the curation of archives as their theme. Finally, the publication and dissemination programme is addressed in Rules 35 and 36. Note that reporting, publication and dissemination are three different things.
General considerations on
reports
Rule 30. Interim and final reports shall be made available according to the timetable set out in the project design, and deposited
in relevant public records.
Written reports should present the outcome of underwater archaeological projects. They are the core of archaeological knowledge production and its consolidation. Reports assemble original observations and evidence together with analysis and interpretation of project results. Reports strictly differentiate between facts or observations, inference and analysis. They present evidence in a way that allows external researchers to draw their own conclusions. The quality of the report and its information value define the credibility of the project, the team and the discipline on the whole. This therefore also determines the future of maritime archaeology as successive projects need to be able to build on previous results.
While this is obvious for larger projects and ex- cavations that need to result in full publication, this
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Reporting