Ice and Concrete
Solid Fluids of Environmental Change
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33371Keywords:
ice, concrete, time, space, solids, fluids, Anthropocene, climate changeAbstract
Recent environmental changes have sparked off unprecedented dialogues between practitioners of the earth sciences and the humanities, which defy some of the basic assumptions underpinning western science. However, a gap still persists between natural scientists and scholars in the humanities in their tendency to concentrate respectively on the solid matter and fluid meaning. This article seeks to close this gap by paying attention to glacial ice and concrete, materials that often mark the onset and culmination of human history and have been historically regarded as solid fluids. We suggest that ice and concrete are caught in a punctuated understanding of change that turns fluidity and solidity into mutually exclusive properties. The article concludes by comparing this oxymoronic syndrome with the ways the Inuit of West Greenland experience their cryogenic landscapes as nurturing environments in constant becoming.
References
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Szerszynski, B. 2010. “Reading and Writing the Weather: Climate Technics and the Moment of Responsibility.” Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3): 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409361915
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Zalasiewicz, J. 2015. “Disputed Start Dates for the Anthropocene.” Nature 520: 436. https://doi.org/10.1038/520436b
____., M. Williams, R. Fortey, A. Smith, T. Barry, A. Coe, P. Brown, P. Rawson, A. Gale, P. Gibbard, J. Gregory, M. Hounslow, A. Kerr, P. Pearson, R. Knox, J. Powell, C. Water, J. Marshall, M. Oates and P. Stone, 2011. “Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (1938): 1036–1055. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0315
Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388128
Benn, D. I., N. R. J. Hulton and R. H. Mottram. 2007. “‘Calvin Laws’, ‘Sliding Laws’ and the Stability of Tide Water Glaciers.” Annals of Glaciology 46: 123–130. https://doi.org/10.3189/172756407782871161
Bergson, H. 1911. Creative Evolution. Translated by A. Mitchell. London: Macmillan.
Briggs, J. 1970. Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
____. 1991. “Expecting the Unexpected: Canadian Inuit Training for an Experimental Lifestyle.” Ethos 19 (3): 259–287. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1991.19.3.02a00010
Bravo, M. 2009. “Voices from the Sea Ice: The Reception of Climate Impact Narratives.” Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2): 256–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2008.09.007
Carey, M. 2007. “The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species.” Environmental History 12: 497–527. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/12.3.497
Cathcart, R. B. 2011. “Anthropic Rock: A Brief History.” History of Geological and Space Sciences 2: 57–74. https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-2-57-2011
Cunningham, F. F. 1990. James David Forbes: Pioneer Scottish Glaciologist. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 2004 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. London: Continuum.
Diemberger, H., K. Hastrup, S. Schaffer, F. Kennel, D. Sneath, M. Bravo, H. F. Graf, J. Hobbs. J. Davis, M. L. Nodari, G. Vassena, R. Irvine, C. Evans, M. Strathern, M. Hulme, G. Kaser and B. Bodenhorn. 2012. “Communicating Climate Knowledge: Proxies, Processes, Politics.” Current Anthropology 53 (2): 226–244. https://doi.org/10.1086/665033
Edgeworth, M. 2014. “Archaeology of the Anthropocene.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1 (1): 73–77. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v1.i1.73
Flusser, V. 1999. The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design. London: Reaktion Books.
Forty, A. 2012. Concrete and Culture: A Material History. London: Reaktion Books.
Haraway, D. 2015. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6: 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934
Harkness, R., C. Simonetti and J. Winter. 2015. “Fluid Rock: Gathering, Flattening, Curing.” Parallax 21 (3): 309–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2015.1058885
Harris, C. and P. Borer. 1998. The Whole House Book: Ecological Building Design and Materials. Aberystwyth: Centre for Alternative Technology.
Harris, E. C. 1979. “The Laws of Archaeological Stratigraphy.” World Archaeology 11 (1): 111–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1979.9979753
____. 2014. “Archaeological Stratigraphy: A Paradigm for the Anthropocene.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1 (1): 105–109. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v1i1.105
Harvey, P. 2010. “Cementing Relations: The Materiality of Road and Public Spaces in Provincial Peru.” Social Analysis 54 (2): 28–46. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2010.540203
Hevly, B. 1996. “The Heroic Science of Glacier Motion.” Osiris 11: 66–86. https://doi.org/10.1086/368755
Hodges, M. 2008. “Rethinking Time’s Arrow: Bergson, Deleuze and the Anthropology of Time.” Anthropological Theory 8 (4): 399–429. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499608096646
Holtorf, C. 2002. “Notes on the Life History of a Pot Sherd.” Journal of Material Culture 7 (1): 49–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183502007001305
Hulme, M. 2014 Can Science Fix Climate Change? A Case Against Climate Engineering. London: Polity.
Ingold, T. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London and New York: Routledge.
____. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London and New York: Routledge.
____. 2015. The Life of Lines. London and New York: Routledge.
____. and T. Kurttila, 2000. “Perceiving the Environment in Finnish Lapland.” Body and Society 6 (3–4): 183–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X00006003010
Krause, F. 2013. “Seasons as Rhythms on the Kemi River in Finnish Lapland.” Ethnos 78 (1): 23–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2011.623303
Lefebvre, H. 2004. Rythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. London: Continuum.
Lewis, S. L. and M. A. Maslin. 2015. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519 (7542): 171–180. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258
Lucas, G. 2013. “Concrete Modernity.” Available online: http://ruinmemories.org/2013/06/concrete-modernity/
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.
May, J. and N. Thrift (eds). 2001. Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203360675
Monastresky, R. 2015. “The Human Age.” Nature 519 (7542): 144–147. https://doi.org/10.1038/519144a
Nuttall, M. 2009. “Living in a World of Movement: Human Resilience to Human Instability in Greenland.” In Anthropology and Climate Change, edited by S. Crate and M. Nuttall, 292–310. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Olsen, B. 2003. “Material Culture after Text: Re-Membering Things.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 36 (2): 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293650310000650
Prentice, J. 1990. Geology of Construction Materials. London: Chapman and Hall.
Prigogine, I. and I. Stengers, 1984. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. London: William Heinemann.
Rockström, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, Å. Persson, F. S. Chapin, E. F. Lambin, T. M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, C. Folke, H. J. Schellnhuber and B. Nykvist. 2009. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461 (7263): 472–475. https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a
Rodrigues, F. A. and I. Joekes, 2011. “Cement Industry: Sustainability, Challenges and Perspectives.” Environmental Chemistry Letter 9 (2): 151–166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-010-0302-2
Schnapp, A. 1996. The Discovery of the Past: The Origins of Archaeology. London: British Museum Press.
Serres, M. 2000. The Birth of Physics. Translated by J. Hawkes. Manchester: Clinamen Press.
Simonetti, C. 2013. “Between the Vertical and the Horizontal: Time and Space in Archaeology.” History of the Human Sciences 26 (1): 90–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695112473618
____. 2018. Sentient Conceptualisations: Feeling for Time in the Sciences of the Past. London and New York: Routledge.
Steno, N. 1916 [1669]. The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno’s Dissertation, Concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Processes of Nature Within a Solid. Translated by J. G. Winter. New York: Macmillan.
Szerszynski, B. 2010. “Reading and Writing the Weather: Climate Technics and the Moment of Responsibility.” Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3): 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409361915
Tejsner, P. 2013. “Living with Uncertainties: Qeqertarsuarmiut Perceptions of Changing Sea Ice.” Polar Geography 36 (1–2): 47–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2013.769282
Trigger, B. 2006. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813016
Tyndall, J. 1871. Hours of Exercise in the Alps. London: Longman, Green & Co.
Whitehead, A. N. 1926. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Witmore, C. 2014. “Archaeology and the New Materialisms.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1 (2): 203–246. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v1i2.16661
Zalasiewicz, J. 2015. “Disputed Start Dates for the Anthropocene.” Nature 520: 436. https://doi.org/10.1038/520436b
____., M. Williams, R. Fortey, A. Smith, T. Barry, A. Coe, P. Brown, P. Rawson, A. Gale, P. Gibbard, J. Gregory, M. Hounslow, A. Kerr, P. Pearson, R. Knox, J. Powell, C. Water, J. Marshall, M. Oates and P. Stone, 2011. “Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (1938): 1036–1055. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0315
Published
2018-06-04
Issue
Section
Research Articles
How to Cite
Simonetti, C., & Ingold, T. (2018). Ice and Concrete: Solid Fluids of Environmental Change. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 5(1), 19-31. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33371
