In their Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives, Muller, Feith, and Fruin compared the accumulation of archival materials with the geological process of deposit of sedimentary materials. This metaphor remained embedded in the European archival traditions and has continued to be discussed until the present, for instance, in the Italian archival literature. This paper explores, from a historical perspective, how and why this metaphor was adopted during the foundational period of modern archival science. The paper analyzes the links between geology and archival science as enterprises involved with historical reconstruction. The paper argues that as palaetiological disciplines, both shared a concern with issues of evidence in the study of individual, historically formed entities. Viewing the formation of archives as parallel to the deposition of sediments provided archival scholars at the turn of the twentieth century with a way of conceptualizing archival thinking as positive scientific knowledge of an essentially individual entity: the archives. This metaphor aligned archival science along with other historical sciences that could boast a measure of reputation and success. The metaphor also matched perfectly the modernist regime of historicity characteristic of the foundational period and culture of the modern archival discipline.

在他们的档案编排和描述手册中，Muller，Feith和Fruin将档案材料的堆积与沉积物质沉积的地质过程进行了比较。这种隐喻一直保留在欧洲档案传统中，并且一直持续到今天，例如在意大利档案文学中一直在讨论。本文从历史的角度探讨了这种隐喻在现代档案科学的基础阶段是如何以及为什么被采用的。本文分析了参与历史重建的企业中地质学与档案科学之间的联系。该论文认为，作为古生物学学科，这两个学科在研究单个的，历史上形成的实体时都对证据问题表示关注。认为档案的形成与沉积物的沉积平行，在二十世纪初，档案学者提供了一种将档案思维概念化为对基本个体的积极科学知识的方法：档案。这个比喻对齐档案科学以及其他可能拥有一定声誉和成功的历史科学。这个隐喻也与现代档案学科的基础时期和文化特征所代表的现代主义制度完美地吻合。