How to cite LiDAR, historic maps and heritage records

Cite the record, not the map: name the publisher, the year, the dataset and the record, then the licence it is published under. Field Archaeology, a research atlas for England, puts a reference in that form on every record card.

Last updated 25 October 2026 · By Gitwix Limited

This guide shows how to cite what you find in Field Archaeology, source by source, with worked examples: Environment Agency LiDAR and the views drawn from it, old Ordnance Survey maps, National Heritage List entries, Historic Environment Records, Portable Antiquities Scheme records and whole datasets. The examples use the Harvard style, with an address and an access date. Harvard comes in many versions, so where your department or publisher sets one, follow it.

What does a reference to data need?

• Who published it. Historic England or the Environment Agency, for example, or Ordnance Survey for an old map.
• The year. For a dataset with a fixed release, such as the Environment Agency's 2022 composite, the year of that release. For a record that is kept up to date, Field Archaeology gives the year you consulted it.
• What it is. The title of the dataset or map and, for a single record, its number and name.
• Where it is. The record's address, or the dataset's DOI where it has one.
• When you looked. The National Heritage List for England, for one, is updated daily, so the access date tells a reader which version you saw.
• The licence. The licence the data is under and, where you reproduce the data, the credit line the publisher asks for.
• The place. For a site or a find, its National Grid reference.

How does Field Archaeology cite a record?

Every record card in Field Archaeology ends with the record's source (the dataset, its publisher and its licence), its record number, linked to the original entry where the publisher has a page for it, its National Grid reference and a Cite button. Cite copies a reference with today's date and the grid reference. For the scheduled monument of Maiden Castle in Dorset, opened from the map, it copies:

Historic England (2026) National Heritage List for England, list entry 1015775: Maiden Castle. Available at: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1015775 (Accessed: 25 October 2026). Open Government Licence v3.0. Map point NGR SY 6689 8845.

The grid reference has eight figures, which pins a 10 m square. Where a record has a position of its own, the reference gives it; otherwise it gives the point where you opened the card and says Map point, as here. A find from the Portable Antiquities Scheme is given its 1 km square, and the reference says so. A record with no public page of its own is referenced as accessed through Field Archaeology, with the date, in place of an address.

The record number opens the publisher's own entry. That entry is the authoritative one, so read it before you rely on what the card says.

How do I cite Environment Agency LiDAR?

Cite the Agency's dataset with the year of the composite, and print the Agency's attribution statement wherever you reproduce the heights or a picture made from them. In England, the LiDAR in Field Archaeology comes from the Environment Agency's 1 m composite terrain and surface models, which the Agency produced in 2022 from surveys flown between 6 June 2000 and 2 April 2022.

Environment Agency (2022) LIDAR Composite Digital Terrain Model (DTM), 1m. Available at: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/01b3ee39-da3f-47b6-83da-dc98e73a461f/lidar-composite-digital-terrain-model-dtm-1m (Accessed: 25 October 2026).

The data is under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which asks you to acknowledge the source with the publisher's attribution statement and, where you can, to link to the licence. The Agency's statement, given on the same record, is:

© Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2022. All rights reserved.

The surface model, which keeps buildings and vegetation, has its own record and the same statement; cite it in the same way. Where the date of the survey matters, say which surveys lie under your area. The README that comes with a LiDAR heights download from Field Archaeology lists them, from the Agency's survey index, with the licence and the statement.

How do I cite a LiDAR view from Field Archaeology?

A view is a picture drawn from the heights, so it has two sources: the Agency's data and the method that drew it. Cite the Agency's dataset as above, name the view you used, and give the date you used it. The atlas's list of sources asks that its views be credited as FieldFinders analysis, with that date. The LiDAR relief view is the exception: it is the Agency's own hillshade of the same terrain model, served by the Agency, so the Agency's reference and statement are enough.

The settings of every view, and the paper each follows where there is one, are on LiDAR visualisations. If your argument rests on how a view was made, cite that paper too, such as Hesse (2010) for the local relief model. Prints and area reports from Field Archaeology say how each LiDAR view on them was drawn, and the README of a LiDAR heights download gives every method with its references. A figure caption can carry it all: the place and the view, who drew it and when, and the Agency's statement and licence, as this one does:

The same frame is shown in eight views on Maiden Castle in LiDAR.

How do I cite a historic Ordnance Survey map?

Cite the map sheet. Field Archaeology shows Ordnance Survey maps of England from 1885 to 1961 as the National Library of Scotland's seamless layers, each joined from many sheets, and every sheet was surveyed, revised and published in its own years. Find the sheet for your place on the Library's Map Images website, which gives its number, its dates and its re-use licence, and cite it with Ordnance Survey as the author and the year it was published. The series in the atlas, with their dates, are set out on Historic maps. Maiden Castle falls on sheet XLVII.NW of the six-inch map of Dorset:

Ordnance Survey (1903) Dorset Sheet XLVII.NW. Six-inch to the mile (1:10,560). Revised 1901 to 1902. Available at: https://maps.nls.uk/view/101447219 (Accessed: 25 October 2026).

The Library describes these as out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey series: Crown copyright in a published map usually lasts 50 years from the end of the year it was published. The Library's scans have terms of their own. For a sheet marked CC-BY on its page, the Library asks for the credit line ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland’ wherever you reuse the image, with a link to its website in anything published online. The seamless layers are licensed CC BY 3.0, on condition that the Library is credited, with a link to its website, wherever they are used.

In Field Archaeology the seamless layers are served by MapTiler, whose terms allow prints of them for internal use only, and a print or report that shows them says so on it. To put an old map in published work, take the sheet from the Library under its terms.

How do I cite a National Heritage List entry?

Cite the entry by its list entry number, with Historic England as the publisher and the entry's name as its title, as in the reference for Maiden Castle above. The number identifies the entry, and its address on Historic England's website ends with /list-entry/ and the number. Give the date you looked: the List is updated daily.

If you reproduce Historic England's data, such as a scheduled area drawn on a figure, its open data terms ask for the attribution ‘© Historic England [year]’ and, for spatial data, ‘Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [year]’. They also recommend saying when the data was obtained:

The Historic England Data contained in this material was obtained on [date]. The most publicly available up to date Historic England Data can be obtained from HistoricEngland.org.uk.

How do I cite a Historic Environment Record?

Name the Historic Environment Record (HER), the record's number and title, and where and when you saw it. Each HER sets its own terms for using and acknowledging its records, so read them first. The Dorset HER's record of Maiden Castle, on its website:

Dorset Historic Environment Record (2026) MDO3244: Maiden Castle, Winterborne St Martin. Available at: https://heritage.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/Monument/MDO3244 (Accessed: 25 October 2026).

Dorset's terms ask for appropriate acknowledgement of the Dorset HER in any publication or report that uses its data. They also say the website is a simplified version of the HER, not to be used for in-depth research or for planning. For a desk-based assessment, ask the HER for a search, and cite what it sends you by the HER's name, the date it was supplied and any reference the HER gives it.

Field Archaeology's area report does not include the county HER, which, as the report explains, is not published openly. In the atlas, Find the HER names the Historic Environment Record for the area in view, with its online search where it has one, how to ask it for a search and its charges as it publishes them.

How do I cite a Portable Antiquities Scheme record?

Cite the record on the Scheme's own database at finds.org.uk, by the record's identifier, with the object and the date you looked. In Field Archaeology each find in the Recorded finds list links to its record there and has its own Cite button; the grid reference is the find's 1 km square, and the reference says so.

Read the Scheme's terms of service before you reuse a record. As last updated, on 21 January 2026, they make the metadata and catalogue data of records available under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. Each photograph's licence is shown beside it, and the Scheme requires that photographs be credited to The Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum.

How do I cite a whole dataset?

When your work rests on a dataset rather than on single records, cite the dataset. In Field Archaeology, Sources and licences lists every dataset behind the layers with its publisher and licence, and Copy citation gives a citation for each; the same datasets are listed on Data and licences. For the geology layer, Copy citation gives:

BGS Geology 625k. The British Geological Survey (UKRI). Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains British Geological Survey materials © UKRI 2026. https://www.bgs.ac.uk/datasets/bgs-geology-625k/ Accessed through Field Archaeology (FieldFinders), 25 October 2026.

An area report ends with Sources and licences: a reference for every dataset it drew on. Every row of an export, whether CSV, GeoJSON or shapefile, carries its dataset, publisher and licence, and the shapefile comes with a README that lists them. Keep them with the data.

Each archive at the Archaeology Data Service gives a reference under Cite As on its page, with the archive's DOI. The hundreds in the Domesday places layer come from this one:

Brookes, S. (2020) Domesday Shires and Hundreds of England [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1058999

Do I cite Field Archaeology itself?

Cite the publishers' records and datasets: they are the evidence. To say where you found them, name Field Archaeology in your method, with the dates you used it. A few layers, though, are Field Archaeology's own analysis, made from those sources, and are credited as analysis rather than cited as records:

• the LiDAR views drawn from the Environment Agency's heights;
• the channels and springs traced from the LiDAR, in the Rivers, streams and springs layer;
• heritage heat, a map of the density of designated sites;
• the place-name origins, which sort names from OpenStreetMap into Roman, Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon.

Credit these in the same way as the LiDAR views above, with the date you used them.

Which credit line does each source ask for?

A reference tells a reader where the evidence is. A credit line is the acknowledgement a licence asks for beside anything you reproduce: a figure, a map extract or a table of data. These are the lines the publishers give, read on 25 October 2026. Fill in the year where a line shows [year].

Where a publisher under the Open Government Licence gives no statement of its own, the licence supplies one: ‘Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.’ Naming a source does not mean it endorses your work, or Field Archaeology: the Open Government Licence and Historic England's terms both say as much.

Questions and answers

Sources

1. Historic England (no date) National Heritage List for England (NHLE). GOV.UK API Catalogue. Available at: https://www.api.gov.uk/he/national-heritage-list-for-england-nhle/ (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
2. British Geological Survey (no date) Open Government Licence. Available at: https://www.bgs.ac.uk/bgs-intellectual-property-rights/open-government-licence/ (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
3. Brookes, S. (2020) Domesday Shires and Hundreds of England [data set]. York: Archaeology Data Service. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5284/1058999 (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
4. Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (2020) Standard and guidance for historic environment desk-based assessment. Reading: CIfA. Available at: https://www.archaeologists.net/sites/default/files/2023-11/CIfA-SandG-DBA-2020.pdf (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
5. Dorset Council (no date) Terms and Conditions, Dorset Heritage Explorer. Available at: https://heritage.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/terms-and-conditions (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
6. Environment Agency (2022) LIDAR Composite Digital Surface Model (DSM), 1m. Available at: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/cf3f1137-c12b-44a1-a835-e80fe4a60b92/lidar-composite-digital-surface-model-dsm-1m (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
7. Environment Agency (2022) LIDAR Composite Digital Terrain Model (DTM), 1m. Available at: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/01b3ee39-da3f-47b6-83da-dc98e73a461f/lidar-composite-digital-terrain-model-dtm-1m (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
8. Hesse, R. (2010) ‘LiDAR-derived local relief models: a new tool for archaeological prospection’, Archaeological Prospection, 17(2), pp. 67 to 72. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/arp.374.
9. Historic England (no date) Historic England Open Data Hub terms and conditions. Available at: https://historicengland.org.uk/terms/website-terms-conditions/open-data-hub/ (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
10. National Library of Scotland (no date) Copyright and reproducing map images from this website. Available at: https://maps.nls.uk/copyright.html (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
11. National Library of Scotland (no date) Historic Maps API. Available at: https://maps.nls.uk/projects/api/ (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
12. Portable Antiquities Scheme (2026) Terms of service. Available at: https://finds.org.uk/terms-of-service (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
13. The National Archives (no date) Open Government Licence for public sector information, version 3.0. Available at: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ (Accessed: 25 October 2026).
14. UCL Library Services (2026) Harvard: Map. Available at: https://library-guides.ucl.ac.uk/harvard/map (Accessed: 25 October 2026).