System Architecture Archaeology: Reconstructing Lost Information Systems Through Artifact Analysis

System Architecture Archaeology (SAA) is a forensic research framework designed to reconstruct lost institutional, administrative, and information-processing systems through the structural analysis of surviving material artifacts. Rather than treating undeciphered or anomalous objects primarily as texts or symbolic works, SAA evaluates them as functional components (“orphaned hardware”) of once-operational social, bureaucratic, or logistical architectures whose training, conventions, and procedural knowledge have collapsed. The methodology integrates institutional intent analysis, structural mirroring, and operational semiotics with falsifiable, material-based tests such as statistical patterning, wear analysis, and production-context reconstruction. This paper formally defines the SAA framework, its diagnostic stages, and its epistemic safeguards, including constraints for AI-assisted hypothesis generation and requirements for academic anchoring and falsifiability. SAA is intended as a general-purpose analytical tool for archaeology, manuscript studies, digital humanities, and historical forensics, particularly for artifacts that resist conventional linguistic or symbolic interpretation.