The Professor George Rolleston Archive came to the Ashmolean Museum, along with the archaeological material resulting from his excavations, as part of a transfer from the Oxford University Natural Sciences Museum to the Ashmolean in 1886. From the mid-twentieth century, part of the archive was housed in the Ashmolean Museum Library, but was transferred back to the Department of Antiquities when that Library became part of the Sackler Library.

The Rolleston archive contains 174 items relating to the archaeology of Oxfordshire, and a significant amount of material which does not fall into this category. It was decided that all of the Rolleston archive should be repackaged in archival materials.