If you are new to SAP and archiving then you should start with the docu which can be found help.sap.com
the easiest way to get to the documentation is to use the archiving object name
e.g. in Google just enter
AM_ASSET site:help.sap.com
Once you open such a link like Archiving FI Asset Data (FI-AA) - Financial Accounting (FI) - SAP Library
then you can find the general introduction for data archiving as the first entry in the navigation menu on the left.
This keeps you already busy for some hours (or days, if you take the chance to test what you read)
This object specific documentation has as well sections which talk about prerequisites and residence times.
In any case, before you carry out an archiving job, you should make sure that you have the most recent OSS notes with bug fixes in your system. Archiving is something final, there is not much you can do if the data is gone. So go to the service.sap.com/notes site and search again with the archiving object and read those notes and decide which one needs to be in your system. Among them you will find plenty of information to get a deep understanding about archiving in general and for this specific object. Some are in dedicated consulting notes, other are just as explanation next to bug fixes.
And if you execute an archiving job as a beginner, then always use the detailed log to get full information. Remember a job log is related to the technical execution of the job, the log with the error messages from archiving is found in the spool file to the job.
