In “The Archive Question,” I examine how the Saudi modern has been imagined and reproduced through material practices: from acts of political commemoration and archeological renovations, to the production of mobile history exhibits and the national archive(s). I approach the political contours of practices of commemoration and its necessary complement, “creative destruction,” such as the production of archives, exhibits, and urban redevelopment plans, as a particular aspect of practices of history making, economic diversification and the reorganization of modern power. What power relations do Saudi archives and sites of commemoration embody? What does the spectacle of cultural productions, such as the archive, the museum, or the city, perform? How do we discern the political socialities inherent in such projects of recollection and commemoration? Examining these various archives as subjects allows me to address them as sites where other histories are suppressed and can be resuscitated. More importantly, however, addressing archival projects through theories of materiality, coupled with those of the archive, allow me to open up questions about the social production of historical knowledge and their embodiments in lived space. Throughout the paper, I focus on several state and private archives, exhibitions, and archeological sites in Saudi Arabia to discern the politics of archiving and spatial transformation to the project of writing history and state formation.