In May 1958 the establishment of the New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA) Site Recording Scheme was approved at the NZAA Annual Conference at Wanganui.

The New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA) Site Recording Scheme is a national system for recording information on archaeological sites. Information is provided to the Site Recording Scheme by many different individuals and organisations as their contribution to a co-operative venture. The Site Recording Scheme currently contains over 60,000 records.

Flyover video based on ArchSite data (October 2010)

Video by Thomas Macdiarmid (with Simon Bickler)

The Site Recording Scheme is endorsed by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and the Department of Conservation and has been described in a review (1996) by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment as “a database of major national significance”.

The Site Recording Scheme was established as a special interest database, and its primary use for many years was as a research tool for members of NZAA. Since the advent of the Resource Management Act 1991 (the RMA) and the revised Historic Places Act 1993 (the HPA) there has been greater use of the Scheme in planning and legal issues for site identification, protection and management. Territorial local authorities are one of the principle users of the Scheme in their ongoing land and heritage management and protection roles