Page 297 - Manual for Activities directed at the Underwater Cultural Heritage

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communication are vital in any project, and especially in the archiving process. The standards that are to be followed must be understood from the beginning, and regular communication between all participants in the process, as well as with the intended archive repository, will ensure that the archive meets all requirements. It must be understood that an archive repository can return a project archive if it fails to meet agreed standards.
The relation between recording and archiving
All aspects of the archaeological process affect the quality of the resulting archive. The archiving process begins with planning the creation of the first record. If proper systems of recording are not consistently applied, then the archive will not be orderly and accessible. If, for example, terminology for features or deposits is not applied consistently, it will hardly be possible later, to distinguish the records of post-holes from pits, or for a maritime example, to know to which deck a find should be attributed. It is advisable to use a standard thesaurus of terms throughout the project. Photographs of features that lack identifying labels will have little value, unless this is compensated by an extensive description of the individual shot. Extensive descriptions are to be the rule for underwater photographs that are taken under very variable circumstances.
 © Parks Canada. Page of the register of structural elements that have been deposited in the Red Bay project archives, Red Bay, Canada.
Curation of project archives