2018/01/01 by Amy Cox Hall · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Archaeological Research and Protection #Digital and Traditional Archives Management #Museums and Cultural Heritage
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/25729861.2018.1514713
openalex publication_date 2018/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/19
Examining research conducted by the author in 2006, 2007 and 2017 at Yale University’s Manuscripts and Archives, and focused particularly on letters as interlocutors and informants, this article demonstrates the ways in which archival research is ethnographic and labyrinthine. Situated in science and technology studies, and drawing on the work of Karen Barad and Tim Ingold, archival research is posited less as discoverable clues and lost traces than as threads of inquiry bursting with possibility, uncertainty and potential for sense making. In the process of working in the archival labyrinth, the researcher, the works and the archive are transformed.