Archives of the Earth: Fossils, Science and Historical Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India
History of Science
Final Report Abstract
Natural history specimens like fossilized plants and animals have locally and globally relevant stories to tell. To date, such stories have been told primarily from the perspective of the Euro-American world, particularly countries like the United States, whose reputation as a fossil hotspot has been cemented through decades of sustained media attention. By contrast, the present project sought to bring the South Asian fossil record into the spotlight, contributing to a handful of studies that have begun to document its relevance as an object of scientific inquiry and historical imagination. The study was unique in its attempt to write, for the first time, a history of palaeobotany and palaeontology in colonial and post-colonial India, with a particular focus on the professionalization and institutionalization of these disciplines during the period 1920s-1970s. The main aims were to investigate the local and global contexts that framed efforts to collect, exchange, study and preserve fossils from the Indian subcontinent, the wide range of individual and institutional actors, material objects and ideas involved therein, and the ways in which these ‘archives’ of the Earth were used to generate knowledge about the deep past and its relation with the human past. The project engaged with archival repositories and fossil collections in India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, the United States and Japan and drew on the expertise of humanities researchers, scientists, and museum curators. It successfully moved beyond existing scholarship to document the global entanglements of palaeontology and palaeobotany in twentieth-century India, furthering our knowledge of the history of natural resources exploitation, climate research and women in Earth sciences. The project also contributed a focus on natural heritage to ongoing debates about the decolonisation of museums, raising awareness about the Indian subcontinent’s rich biodiversity and its scientific relevance to the study of the deep past. In this respect, its findings are relevant not only to historians of science and the environment, but also to palaeoscientists, conservationists, museum curators and members of the public with an interest in palaeontology and natural heritage.
Publications
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A ‘large and valuable’ Siwalik fossil collection in the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Historical Biology, 36(7), 1167-1179.
Stimpson, Christopher M.; Jukar, Advait M.; Bonea, Amelia; Newell, Susan & Howlett, Eliza
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Expert comment in Kamala Thiagarajan, ‘Why India's fossil wealth has remained hidden,’ BBC Future, 17 January 2022.
Amelia Bonea
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‘Owning the (Deep) Past: Palaeontological Knowledge Making and the Political Afterlives of Fossils.’ History of Knowledge Blog, German Historical Institute Washington.
Amelia Bonea
