Abstract
Editions – a specific genre of scientific literature – play a central role not only in philology, but also in archaeology as comprehensive publications of material. Their importance for archaeological knowledge production has been emphasized repeatedly, but so far not systematically investigated. The aim of this contribution is to analyse the praxeological connection of the world and its representtations in the editing of archaeological sources by employing Latour’s concept of the “circulating reference”. This work of translation is traced using as an example a needle that was published as part of the research and edition project Prähistorische Bronzefunde. Thus the paper deals with thing identities, object transformation sand (de-)punctualisation, as well as the difference between sources and data in the course of editing and mapping of archaeological finds and features.