Archives of the Earth: Fossils, Science and Historical Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India

这个项目探索植物和动物化石作为科学调查和历史想象的对象在20世纪的印度。它记录了当地和全球的背景，这些背景构成了收集、交换、研究和保存化石的努力，广泛的个人和机构参与者，其中涉及的实物和思想，以及这些地球“档案”如何被用来产生关于自然世界的深刻过去及其与人类过去的关系的知识。它利用了印度、英国、德国、瑞士、美国和日本的档案库，超越了殖民者和殖民者的二分法，调查了殖民时期和后殖民时期印度“化石科学”的全球纠缠，并进一步加深了我们对自然资源开发、气候变化研究和科学女性的认识。这项研究的独特之处在于，它首次尝试撰写20世纪印度的古植物学和古生物学历史。迄今为止进行的研究使制定了一项议程，特别侧重于确定被遗忘的印度化石收藏和古科学知识形成和制度化的隐藏行动者，其中包括妇女、当地地形学家、收藏家和实地工作者。在这方面，该项目还为正在进行的关于科学史非殖民化和多样化的辩论做出了重大贡献，并提高了人们对该地区被忽视的自然历史遗产状况的认识。

This project explores plant and animal fossils as objects of scientific investigation and historical imagination in twentieth-century India. It documents the local and global contexts that framed efforts to collect, exchange, study and preserve fossils, 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 of the natural world and its relation with the human past. Making use of archival repositories in India, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, the US and Japan, it moves beyond the colonizer-colonized dichotomy to investigate the global entanglements of ‘fossil science’ in colonial and post-colonial India and further our knowledge of natural resources exploitation, climate change research and women in science. The study is unique in its attempt to write, for the first time, a history of palaeobotany and palaeontology in twentieth-century India. The research conducted to date has enabled the formulation of an agenda focused particularly on identifying forgotten Indian fossil collections and hidden actors of palaeoscientific knowledge making and institutionalization, among them women, local topographers, collectors and fieldworkers. In this respect, the project also makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates about decolonizing and diversifying the history of science and raises awareness about the neglected state of natural history heritage in the region.