ABSTRACT
Over the centuries people have made sense of history and human experience through collecting and preserving for posterity their words and images. Today, much of what is known about the past is conserved in archives belonging to public and university libraries, museums, and social and government institutions, as well as in private collections. It is suggested in this chapter that an archived image constitutes a ritualized representation of the past through the selective process of collecting, cataloging, and conserving. From a semiotic perspective, this study explores how meaning is imposed on archived images through C. S. Peirce’s trichotomy of signs (Noth, 1990). Further, the cultural function of archives is examined to provide a richer context for understanding the transient nature of historical meaning as it is constructed through the accumulation and commodification of social artifacts.
