Long-lasting research at the Orient Department has involved and led to the accumulation of extensive records on the history and archaeology in the host countries. But these also reflect the development of the archaeological fieldwork itself. Project and excavation archives are therefore valuable contemporary testimonies and thus track research, researchers, and societies in transition. Even after any scientific research project has been published, the records are preserved for future purposes.

The archival material at the Orient Department is systematically being indexed and gradually made accessible for investigations on various concerns and topics. Archiving furthermore involves adapted storage, monitoring, and restoration of analogue (paper) and digital documents. Concepts for long-term care were thus developed in cooperation with lecturers and future restorers from the University of Applied Sciences, Berlin (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin, HTW). Conservation measures for the material categories paper, film, and synthetic materials follow as required.

The archive of the Orient Department maintains three holding groups: the departmental archives of the Orient Department and of its predecessor department at Baghdad, the records of its own excavation projects, and finally the scholars archive (Gelehrtenarchiv) that hold the legacies and estates of important researchers in Near Eastern archaeology and Islamic art history. These include the estates by Walter Bachmann, Jutta Börker-Klähn, Helmut Bohtz, Ernst P. Kühnel, Heinrich Lenzen, and Arnold Nöldeke, and partly that of Walter Andrae.

The holdings are continually indexed in the iDAI.world systems and can be accessed for research purposes on request.