Archaeological Site Recording Standards and Practice in Nigerian Universities: A Review of Fieldwork Reports

The quality of archaeological site recording directly determines the reliability of interpretations generated from fieldwork data, yet standards of recording practice in Nigerian university-based archaeology departments have not been systematically reviewed. This study examines site recording standards and practice as reflected in a corpus of fifty student and staff fieldwork reports submitted across five Nigerian universities between 2018 and 2024, evaluating their descriptive completeness, methodological clarity, and compliance with internationally recognized recording standards. The sampled reports were drawn from universities in Ibadan, Nsukka, Zaria, Maiduguri, and Calabar, representing all six geopolitical zones. Each report was assessed against a recording quality index encompassing twenty criteria covering stratigraphic description, artefact cataloguing, spatial data recording, feature documentation, and digital data management. Results indicate wide variation across institutions and between individual supervisors, with stratigraphic description quality particularly variable and digital spatial documentation generally absent from reports predating 2021. Recent reports from Ibadan and Nsukka show measurable improvement in GPS coordinate recording and photographic documentation standards, while reports from the northeastern institutions show the most significant capacity constraints, partly attributable to the difficulty of conducting fieldwork under insecurity conditions. The study recommends the development of a Nigerian Standard for Archaeological Field Recording, coordinated by the Archaeological Association of Nigeria, and the incorporation of standardized recording training in postgraduate fieldwork preparatory curricula. Keywords: site recording, fieldwork standards, Nigerian universities, archaeological practice, quality assessment.