Where did this claim come from?
We trace statements of fact back through the documentary record to their earliest verifiable source — and report plainly where that record runs out.
The work
A claim enters circulation, gets repeated, acquires citations, and becomes settled. Often the citations lead somewhere real. Sometimes they lead to another repetition, then another, and then to nothing at all.
A Trace follows that chain backward through archival holdings across multiple national and institutional collections, establishes where the claim first appears in a surviving document, and documents every link along the way — including the broken ones.
The output is a written report: the chain as found, the sources with their identifiers, and an explicit account of what could not be established.
Standards
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Gaps are reported, not filled
Where the record is silent, the report says so. A plausible reconstruction is not a finding.
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Inference is labeled as inference
Material that was retrieved and material that was reasoned to are marked separately and never blended.
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No substitution of sources
If a specified archive is unreachable or returns nothing, that is logged as a result. Nothing is quietly swapped in from elsewhere.
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A partial retrieval yields a partial report
Scope is set before the work begins and reported against honestly. Completeness is never implied.
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Negative findings are findings
"This claim has no traceable origin" is a result worth paying for, and it is delivered as readily as a confirmation.
Published Traces
No Traces have been published yet.
The first reports are in preparation. Each one will be listed here with its subject, the dates the work ran, and the full report — including the Traces that failed to confirm what they set out to examine.
Enquiries
Commissions, questions about scope, and requests for a sample methodology statement.