In this article, Koskinen & Paloposki discuss the archaeological phase of their research into retranslating in the Finnish literary system. They address the issue from the point of view of the past and future development on retranslation research, focusing on methodology. They argue that for the understanding of the phenomenon to advance, the traditional case study orientation of retranslation research needs to be complemented with other, macro level approaches. They discuss what kinds of research questions the archaeological data allowed to generate, how collecting bibliographical information of a larger set of translations allowed to place individual case studies within the bigger picture, and how it allowed them to compare their findings to similar, macro level research done by other scholars. The next step for retranslation research will consist of studies asking new questions on the basis of such macro level empirical evidence (tested on new, targeted data sets or case studies) and comparisons between these studies completed in different cultural, historical and literary contexts.