The Research Committee is keen that our members should follow high standards of excavation recording and therefore wishes to encourage all to follow a standard system which will achieve the desired standards. There are many suites of documents in use but most follow a similar approach which is based on the identification, recording and ordering of the stratigraphic relationship of “contexts”. The Committee has agreed to recommend the use of the system currently used by the Roman Studies Group which has been developed and used over a number of years by Society members who consulted, amongst other sources, the Essex County Council and Museum of London Archaeology Service manuals.  

A copy of the standards has been lodged with the library at Castle Arch and will be made available on the Society’s website.  It would be of assistance to current and future researchers if these standards were commonly used by all Society members when undertaking excavations in the county.  

Comments on the standards are welcome and will be taken into account in any future modifications. Consideration will also be given to the provision of standards for other forms of survey and recording, possibly as separate documents.    

Emma Corke (Chairman, Research Committee)

Rose Hooker (Secretary Research Committee)

Download the files below (they are in PDF format so you will need the Adobe PDF Reader) to read the full Excavation Recording Manual (main file) , and the Appendix which contains copies of the forms to be used.