This article seeks to animate historical resource geographies by uncovering unforeseen material lineages and foregrounding the lived experiences of otherwise unremembered resource workers. We revisit research on the historical resource geographies of the guitar, adapting what McGeachan (2018) calls ‘the trace’ to connect material archival fragments with visceral, ethnographic encounters in multiple sites, in the present. Unlike classical instruments with extensive documentation, the guitar's historical resource geographies remain opaque, being mass manufactured since the 1800s from commercial timbers with vague provenance. Here, we trace one guitar wood, Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) — the most common for soundboards — from a chance discovery in a Pennsylvania factory archive to the Pacific Northwest to confirm colonial, industrial, and military origins. Sitka's material traces also facilitated impromptu ethnographic encounters, including opportunities to meet surviving ex-workers in Hoquiam, Washington state, who, many decades ago, milled wood for musical instruments. Following the trace in multiple, unexpected directions enabled us to sense the working lives of ex-timber workers while confronting environmental legacies, bearing witness to the people, places, and trees behind the guitar. Our research validates feminist and anticolonial methodological approaches that, while tracing material fragments in time and space, encounter the world viscerally. Resulting empirical explanations are richer, open to emotional ambivalence and ongoing dialogue.

本文旨在通过揭示不可预见的物质谱系并突出那些被遗忘的资源工作者的生活经历，来激活历史资源地理。我们重新审视对吉他历史资源地理的研究，采用 McGeachan (2018) 所说的“痕迹”，将物质档案片段与当下多个地点的本能、民族志遭遇联系起来。与拥有大量文献记录的古典乐器不同，吉他的历史资源地理分布仍然不透明，自 1800 年代以来一直采用来源不明的商业木材进行大规模制造。在这里，我们追踪一种吉他木材，西加云杉（Picea satchensis））——最常见的音板——从宾夕法尼亚工厂档案馆到太平洋西北部的偶然发现，以确认殖民、工业和军事起源。锡特卡的物质痕迹也促进了即兴的民族志邂逅，包括与华盛顿州霍奎姆幸存的前工人见面的机会，他们在几十年前为乐器铣削木材。沿着多个意想不到的方向追踪痕迹，让我们感受到前木材工人的工作生活，同时面对环境遗产，见证吉他背后的人、地方和树木。我们的研究验证了女权主义和反殖民方法论的方法，这些方法在追踪时间和空间上的材料碎片的同时，也与世界发生了发自内心的接触。由此产生的经验解释更加丰富，