Project description
A global study of amber extraction, trade, and science
Amber is fossilised resin from plants that existed millions of years ago. It is found and traded across the world, as both a gemstone and an object of scientific value. Amber often contains prehistoric organic material which is studied in laboratories to learn more about the planet’s past. Funded by the European Research Council, the AMBER project aims to conduct the first global study of amber across industry, trade, and science. The project will integrate anthropology, political ecology, and science and technology studies. It will concentrate on global circulations, resource extraction, and ethical considerations beyond the human. To do so, project researchers will explore extractive economies in Kachin State and Chiapas, scientific studies in Europe and China, and wholesale trade in the Baltic states, China, and the Middle East.
Objective
The Anthropocene compels us to question established categories and binaries through which we understand the world and act in it: human and nonhuman, life and nonlife, biological and geological. What we still lack is a theoretical framework, methodological and storytelling tools, to analyse environmental and social concerns alongside geological pasts and futures. AMBER addresses this key challenge by drawing scientific understanding of ecological and geological relations into a global ethnography of the extraction and exchange of a unique, emblematic gemstone. Amber is a fossilised resin secreted by plants between 16 and 300 million years ago; it is found across the planet and is one of the earliest recorded items in long-distance trade. Aside from its ornamental value, amber contains prehistoric organic material – leaves, invertebrates, dinosaur fragments. This has generated intense scientific interest, so amber is now studied in palaeontology and geology laboratories to answer fundamental questions about the planet’s biological evolution and previous phases of mass extinction. This project will be the first in-depth, global study of amber across industry, trade, and science. AMBER breaks new ground by bringing together three dimensions in a common analysis: anthropological frameworks of global circulations; the political ecology of resource extraction; and non-humanist approaches to scientific research and ethics of care beyond the human. Rooted in anthropology, the project considers the multiple and entangled worlds of amber: its extractive economies in the war-torn forests of Kachin state; its scientific study in laboratories in China and Europe; and its wholesale trade in Santo Domingo, Kaliningrad and the Baltic states, and China. The project examines their intersections through collaborative and comparative research and will thus lay the conceptual groundwork for a new geological anthropology for the Anthropocene.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
0313 Oslo
Norway