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二十世纪的印度。它记录了构成收集、交流、研究和保存化石的努力的地方和全球背景，其中涉及的广泛的个人和机构行为者、实物和思想，以及这些地球“档案”被用来产生关于自然世界的深层过去及其与人类过去的关系的知识的方式。利用印度，英国，德国，瑞士，美国和日本的档案库，它超越了殖民者殖民的二分法，调查殖民地和后殖民印度的“化石科学”的全球纠缠，并进一步了解自然资源开发，气候变化研究和科学中的女性。这项研究的独特之处在于，它首次尝试撰写一部20世纪印度古植物学和古生物学的历史。迄今为止进行的研究使我们能够制定一项议程，特别侧重于查明被遗忘的印第安化石收藏品以及古科学知识形成和制度化的隐藏行为者，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，并提高了对该地区自然历史遗产被忽视状况的认识。

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.