This article asks what the practice of walking might reveal about archival research in postcolonial contexts. Through an exploration of walking in its many iterations in the city of Tamale, Northern Ghana—including seeking directions to state archives, talking with others while walking toward archives, and observing the exchange of archival data within communities as citizens walk—I explore the relationship between Tamale’s colonial, state, indigenous and community-led archival spheres. As a sensory, relational, and embodied practice, walking affords unique insights into different experiences of and relationships to archives. Walks toward state archives reveal sensorial histories of colonial power enacted through space for Tamale’s Dagbamba and Hausa residents, while also highlighting the foreign research networks who continue to draw upon this archival material. At the same time, documents within state archives—including maps and files—provide new possibilities for “virtual walks” through the colonial city, revealing insights into the positioning of both state and indigenous archives as they relate to the colonial production of space. Ethnographic reflections on walks to indigenous areas of the city in search of postcolonial archives afford insights into other archival spaces that are firmly situated within sites of resistance to colonial urban planning schemes. Walking lends new insights into the ways that archives are accessed and circulated outside of the state, as archival cassette recordings were made by Dagbamba recordists as they walked through indigenous neighborhoods during the postcolonial period. Subsequently, these recordings have been digitized and are now circulated between community members via mobile phones as they walk through their neighborhoods each day. Walking thus provides a framework for thinking across archival spaces in postcolonial contexts, encouraging dialogue between these seemingly unrelated archival spheres and communities.

本文询问在后殖民时代的背景下，步行的实践可能揭示出档案研究的哪些内容。通过探索在加纳北部塔马莱市进行的多次迭代探索，包括寻找国家档案馆的方向，在走向档案馆时与他人交谈以及观察市民在社区中行走时档案数据的交换，我探索了这种关系在Tamale的殖民，州，土著和社区主导的档案领域之间。作为一种感官上，关系上和体现上的实践，步行提供了对档案的不同经历和与档案的关系的独特见解。向国家档案馆走去，揭示了塔马莱（Tamale）的达格班巴（Dagbamba）和豪萨（Hausa）居民通过太空制定的殖民权力的感官历史，同时还重点介绍了外国研究网络，这些网络继续借鉴了这些档案材料。同时，国家档案馆中的文件（包括地图和文件）为“虚拟漫步”整个殖民城市提供了新的可能性，揭示了与国家和地方档案馆有关的殖民地空间定位的见解。人种学上对步行到城市土著地区以寻找后殖民档案的思考，为深入了解其他档案空间提供了见识，这些档案空间牢固地位于抵抗殖民城市规划方案的地点之内。步行为人们在州外访问和分发档案的方式提供了新的见解，因为达格班巴（Dagbamba）录音师在后殖民时期穿越土著居民区时制作了录音带。随后，这些录音已被数字化，现在每天在社区成员中穿过社区时，通过移动电话在社区成员之间传播。因此，步行为在后殖民背景下跨档案空间思考提供了框架，并鼓励了这些看似无关的档案领域与社区之间的对话。