Archives play a fundamental role in historical research, yet archivality as a human cultural product subject to enormous variation – across cultural systems and across time – has received almost no comparative attention. We propose the formation of a collaborative network among humanistic scholars interested in investigating the formation, use, and representation of archives around the globe in the researchers with the necessary linguistic skills, epistemological approaches, this network will contribute to enriched research on various regions and topics.

Of equal importance,however, will be the project’s contribution to understanding how archival accumulation has shaped legal, political, memorial and not least historiographical expectations about the production and preservation of records in different cultural contexts. In light of the last half-century’s theoretical and methodological insights, it is no longer tenable to write scholarship from the archives without understanding the history of the archives.

The conceptual workshop on May 7 seeks to define more clearly the terrain that such a network and project will consider. Bringing together experts on diverse record-keeping traditions and from varying theoretical perspectives, we seek to promote shared understandings of the decisive theoretical and empirical issues that the comparative study of pre-modern archivality must address. A second goal is to highlight the many research opportunities that the comparative study of archivality can offer, and to help create a supportive network of junior as well as senior humanists that can promote such research. Scholars working on any part of the world where systematic recordkeeping took place are invited to participate.