This work aims to investigate the structure of archaeological legacy data. This is undertaken to evaluate the possibility of their integration into GIS. From this, recommendations for a GIS-optimized field method will be drawn in a first approach. The study is conducted on documentary data samples in particular mapping data from various archaeological excavation projects. The samples are mainly from excavation projects in the traditional field of german archaeology. In addition, open data sets from Great Britain are considered. The approach is intended to provide a better understanding of the structure and content of archaeological documentation data. Thus, it aims to evaluate and further develop GIS as a recording tool for archaeological fieldwork, concerning an efficient and sensible implementation and planning of field recording strategies. This work's focus and perspective are on improving the process of recording and linking documentation data from fieldwork projects directly to GIS processing.