The Book as Archive

The article centers on a handwritten account of the stillbirth of conjoined twins in eighteenth-century Mexico stitched into a book about natural history. Finding things in books as part of an accidental process of discovery in the present does not equal random acts by users in the past. Inserting documents and prints of various kinds into books represented for historical actors a distinct kind of archival practice that combined careful observation, deliberation, and a certain measure of dexterity to manipulate the physicality of a book. Examples of records and objects found in other titles from the same time period and region help to contextualize the way people used books and how they stored memories, as well as what we as researchers can learn when critically analyzing the materiality of print

Accidental · Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Deliberation · Materiality (auditing) · Natural (archaeology) · Period (music) · Political science · Visual arts · Computer Science · History · Latin American history and culture · Law