This article explores how to incorporate the topic of the global environmental crisis called the “anthropocene” into archives studies and connect it to ecological practical reasons. In order to encourage discussion of archival studies, which puts the environmental crisis at a kind of archive constant value, this study seeks to examine the possibility of a quality shift in archival studies based on ecology. This article aims to go beyond the pragmatism of preparing improvements to eco-friendly record management, which is recently claimed by the “Green Archive” in Western archival studies. It calls for a new concept called ‘ecological archive’, which theoretically combines a more archives-based and ecological paradigm, and its epistemological transformation. Specifically, the ecological approach of archives is first discovered in the discussion of archival studies and at the same time, through the “ecological turn” of archives emphasized by recent anthropocene discourses, the concept of “ecological archive” emphasized by this article is embodied. This study uses ‘ecological archive’ as a universal and theoretical framework for archives as a basic concept for building ecological ‘living’ archives. In other words, for the construction of ecological archives, we reinterpret and extend so-called democratic values for archives, i.e., post-custodianship, community archives, and archives of emotions. Finally, the records of foot-and-mouth disease killing burial sites, an important site and example of the anthropocene tragedy, exemplifies the methodology of the actual application of ecological living archives. The case analysis aims to seek a new qualitative shift in record management that adapts to global ecological transformation, while also emphasizing the documentation by archival activism in ecological field practices jointly organized by archivists and citizens.