Traditionally, it has been impractical for archaeologists to retain precise spatial provenance for surface artifacts that are not particularly interesting or rare. Collected artifacts are aggregated by site, sector, or by locus. However, artifact collection is increasingly seen as a destructive practice. The collection strategy used in the Upper Colca Survey consisted of assigning a unique ID number (ArchID) from a single number series to all spatial proveniences, point locations, loci, or entire sites-very much like postal zip codes for street addresses. After four months of fieldwork, 1100 spatial provenance numbers had been assigned from the series. As described previously, individual artifacts collected from a given provenience were assigned key ID#s after a decimal point. An interesting alternative to handwriting the unique ID# on labels for sample bags collected in the field is to bring a sheet of pre-printed barcode stickers. As the sticker is placed on the sample container, a serial barcode scanning wand can scan the barcode value directly into the GIS record. The barcode scanner approach is somewhat restrictive, however, because the mobile GIS unit must to be available to scan every collection bag.