Finding and reading surviving records (letters, minutes, drafts, ephemera) and asking who kept them, and why.
Key thinkers: Carolyn Steedman, Ann Laura Stoler, Antoinette Burton
The longer story
Archives hold traces of the past—documents, photographs, recordings, objects, ephemera. Archival research is detective work: you don't know what you'll find, and you're dependent on what others chose to keep. Source criticism is crucial: who created this document? For what purpose? What's missing? Archives aren't neutral repositories; they're shaped by power and priority. What got preserved tells you about who mattered. For historical research on creative practice, archives are often the only access—but they reveal and conceal simultaneously.