Creation and Dispersal of the Ingholt Archive

This lecture explores the creation and subsequent dispersal of the Ingholt Archive, a unique scholarly collection that illuminates both the practice of archaeology and the afterlives of research materials. Assembled through the work of Harald Ingholt in the early twentieth century, the archive brought together photographs, manuscripts, notes, and letters from Palmyra/Tadmor. While initially conceived as a coherent and private research tool, the material was later fragmented across institutions, shaped by academic networks, collecting practices, and historical contingencies. This talk examines how archives are not static repositories but dynamic entities continually reinterpreted and reorganized. By tracing the archive’s material and intellectual transformations, the lecture offers broader reflection on cultural heritage, archival ethics, and the ways knowledge is preserved, dispersed, lost, and rediscovered over time.