Visual and Multimodal Research in Organization and Management Studies

4The Archaeological Approach

4.1 Core Ideas

Research in an archaeological tradition is primarily concerned with the systematic reconstruction of socially shared meaning based on the analysis of pre-existing (multimodal) artefacts in which such meaning is embodied. Artefacts, or texts, in this regard, serve as a cultural memory—as the ‘storage’ or ‘crystallization’ of social knowledge. Whether or not embodied in tangible products, texts are therefore in the first place semantic units (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), meaning(-making) constructs. Actors in the field produce artefacts and other texts to organize and legitimate the social world. Texts, accordingly, constitute traces of such world-building and world-maintenance. In social semiotics, this ...