Excavating the Archived Web: Writing a Vernacular Web History following Media-Archaeological Principles

This article reflects on how media-archaeological principles can inform research with web archives and the writing of cultural web history through a case study of the XS4ALL homepage collection at the National Library of the Netherlands. Created by everyday users in the 1990s and early 2000s, these homepages offer rare insight into vernacular web practices, while their retrospective, selective archiving raises fundamental questions of materiality, temporality, and source criticism. The article presents a methodological reflection organised around three mediaarchaeological themes: the materiality of archived websites and the techno-cultural archive; experimental web archaeology, focusing on the epistemic role of tools, software, and collaboration; and the writing of cultural web history, attentive to non-linear trajectories, everyday practices, and recurring imaginaries. It demonstrates how media archaeology provides a framework for acknowledging the partiality of web archives while affirming their necessity, and asserts that its principles are vital for the growing fields of web archive studies and digital humanities.