Every feature and artifact that was mapped individually received a unique identified key (ArchID number) that was used after the fieldwork was over to connect the GPS derived geographical location to associated attribute tables for recording numerical and text characteristics, and other field observations. The ArchID number links Arcpad GPS derived data to these other tabular data in a GIS through One-To-One or a One-To-Many relates. Collections were conducted during the course of fieldwork and in many of these spatial proveniences, a number of individual artifacts were collected and examined creating a One-To-Many relate situation.

An example would best illustrate this situation. In this example, a concentration of lithics is identified and it is mapped and described during fieldwork as lithic locus ArchID: 100. All field acquired data are linked through the number 100, including the polygon delimiting the concentration, environmental and cultural observations at the location, photograph numbers, the date and time of the mapping that is automatically logged. Bags of artifacts collected from that provenience, including ceramics, would receive the ArchID 100 spatial identifier. Furthermore the #100would be noted, or the range of numbers in that area, in the verbal field journal descriptions providing an explicit link between digital tables and interpretive description.

During a later phase of research, when bags of artifacts are opened and analyzed, an artifact-specific level of proveniencing occurs. A collection of artifacts that are spatially provenienced to a polygon: ArchID 100 results, however when it comes to time acquire detailed measurements on those artifacts, some of these artifacts should now be numbered individually. The solution in the Upper Colca Project was to create a catalog ID number, or "rotulo" in Spanish (RotID), such that each spatial provenience has lab numbers inside it numbered 1 to n.In practice, the bags would be tagged with a number and a decimal as inArchID.RotIDor100.15for the fifteenth artifact analyzed from spatial context 100, although digitally the two number series remain integers stored in separate fields. Lithics, ceramics, bone, and any other artifact class were stored together in a single second-level number series, yet in practice there was an attempt during lab work to keep all artifacts of a single class within a contiguous numbering range.