The La Brea Tar Pits have yielded the most extensive record of a Pleistocene environment on the planet. Yet the pits are also a misnomer, for they are an artifact of nineteenth-century asphalt mining and twentieth-century fossil excavations.
A Platform on Representation, Engagement, and Community
Category: #envhistmatters
The Life of Air: A Meditation on Studying the Unseen
From the south-facing window of my third floor apartment, I sometimes see the sunrise.
Acacias in Amboseli: Trees as Historical Memory in African Environmental History
There are certain questions that have given my research on the history of the Ilkisongo Maasai and conservation a sense of urgency.
Notes from the Field: Community-Based Research in the Apple Orchards of Boulder County
A few miles northeast of Boulder, CO lies the Midwest in miniature—and where our crew from the Boulder Apple Tree Project sampled trees from Sarah’s orchard.
“The White Farmers is pregeded agence the poor colored people”: Refuting the Lost Cause of the Lowcountry
This is the second half of a two-part series on the Lost Cause of the Lowcountry.
Viewing Virtual Worlds: What Can Video Games Teach Us About Environmental History?
Some elements of gaming worlds are imaginary, and they can give insight into what’s around the game builders—or their hopes of what a better world looks like.
Hoofbeats in the Archive: Historical Animals’ Roles in Constructing Historical Narratives
Centering horses in historical narratives offers scholars a new lens for examining the past and our relationship with it.
Crip Cows?: Confronting Disabled Animals in the Archive
I met Katie in Washington, D.C. this summer in a box of files from the Smithsonian Institute Archives.
Taming the Rivers: Science on the Making in the Alluvial Gold Mines in Nineteenth-Century Antioquia, Colombia
Pedro Nisser made me rethink the way in which the technological innovation in mining happened in Antioquia.
Sharp Words: Etiology in Action
Fomites. I jotted the word down. The task seemed simple enough.