An intellectual encounter and sensory experience, fieldwork is a crucial part of an epigraphist's work and the primary source of knowledge in the discipline. During the mission, experts produce a variety of documentation. This article analyses two types of knowledge recording media in medieval epigraphy, at two distinct moments in time: in the 1970s, with the notebooks of the first team of medieval epigraphists in France, and in the 2020s, with the field records of an international team. Observing, locating, deciphering and measuring the inscribed artefact oneself are the various actions whose results are recorded in a free or codified manner on these media. The influence of digital technology and the material turn can be seen on the registration form, while the notebooks emphasise interactions with those who preserve the inscriptions; these two types of intermediate writing each show signs of subjectivity and scientific intuition.