ABSTRACT
This chapter responds to recent calls for a ‘material turn’ in archival scholarship by exploring archival texts, past and present, for evidence of material concerns in both theory and practice. It is argued that recognition of the functional significance and preservation requirements of different media has been integral to record creation and keeping across history and that antiquarian scholarship, which contributed to the development of both the historical and archival sciences, paid particular attention to the evidentiality of documentary media. Associations with dirt, demeaning physical labour, women’s work and prioritisation of intellectual over sensory aspects of archival work, however, have served to obscure or demote materiality, both in the writings of contemporaries and in associated historiography. There has therefore been little celebration of documentary or archival materiality. Moreover, the creative and craft aspects of archival practice are less susceptive of verbal articulation than its more theoretical face, which has also been emphasised in the drive to professionalisation. The chapter concludes with recognition of the value of the emergent field of ‘archaeological archivology’ and appeals to those within both the academic discipline and the profession of archives to identify and acknowledge the (often tacit) expertise of their own practices.
