Just realized my field note habit was ruining my dig records
A few months back I was working a site outside Santa Fe and a volunteer pointed out that my field notes were basically a mess of personal impressions, not actual data. She said something like, "You're writing a diary, not an excavation log." Man, that stung, but she was right. I would jot down stuff like "beautiful pot sherd" instead of the exact depth and grid location. Now I use a set form with checkboxes for every layer, soil color, and artifact count before I add any of my own thoughts. My notebook is way less fun to read, but the crew can actually follow what I found without asking me a hundred questions. Anyone else get called out for sloppy records and have to rebuild their whole system?