Archives are neither repositories nor <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" rend="italic">purveyors</hi> of ‘memory’, as so much contemporary discourse would have it: more accurately, they provide (part of) the raw material that feeds into its construction. The ‘archive equals memory’ equation obscures the role of <hi xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" rend="italic">mediation</hi> in the process of turning archival materials into reconstructions of the past, and the manifold ways in which this influences ‘memory’, be it individual or social/cultural.