With modern excavation techniques, painstaking excavation not only uncovers the artifacts themselves but also reveals their associations to each other and to the site. The recovery of much of the unique information embodied in an artifact depends on many associations, including the stratigraphic layers in which the artifact was found, its position in the ground, its relationship to other artifacts, and traces of material found with it. This information, meticulously recorded in field photographs and notebooks, is all-important as it provides the contextual record for the artifacts