The Archive

Letter from the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss to the president of the Centro Studi thanking for the granting of the V Recognition of CSACA

Of the 4 sectors of Ce.Do.Ri.CA, the Archive is obviously the first in order of time to take shape, and that happens because since the beginning in 1977 an attempt has been made to provide the Study Center with a memory of the whole life of the Centro Studi, not only administrative and epistolary, but also scientific and historical.

However, the archive is the last to publicly assume a documentary importance that goes beyond the administrative level, reaching a historical value.

In fact, the archive immediately became the place where the practices containing the documentation of activities converged and, alongside the increasingly large administrative body (which collects several hundred files), a documentary heritage of interest, both historical and scientific, was formed.

Part of the Archive folders

The simple corpus of correspondence is enough to give value to this Archive. Immediately in contact with important international American figures, there are correspondences with figures such as Claude Levi Straus, Tullio Seppilli, Anita Seppilli, Tom Zuidema, John Paddock, Alfredo López Austin, Serge Gruzinski, and many others.In decades of life, there has been the formation of folders containing the International American Studies Congresses, dozens and dozens of research files and related missions, hundreds of conferences, seminars, development and cooperation projects; in a nutshell, the life of the national American studies and a large part of international American studies for the past 40 years and beyond.

In fact, it should not be considered that the documentation is limited to the material produced directly by our Study Center. Some documents that now acquire particular value come from donations from all over the world.

Aware of this value, around 2007 we began to have keep in touch with the Archival Superintendency which, after some visits by its representatives (including Dr. Mario Squadroni), decided to start the procedures to recognize the “particularly important historical interest for the archival production” of the Centro Studi Americanistici “Circolo Amerindiano” onlus.

The oldest archive

At present our archive consists of:

• Tens of thousands of paper documents collected in 30 linear meters of folders;
• A few hundred hours of audio and video recordings (deposited in the Audio-Video Documentation Center “Daniele Fava”);
• 18 TERA of digital materials.

However, paper and non-digital video materials are deteriorating over the years and must be protected, so they are constantly being passed on and stored in digital format.