Ice Cores as Temporal Probes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33538Keywords:
Antarctica, extinction, ice, ice cores, materiality, temporality, vanishingAbstract
This article develops a speculative approach to thinking about the temporalities of ice.Examining the politics of ice cores as temporal probes, it argues that ice comes to matterin political and ecological terms and as the very "stuff of time". As cylinders of ice thatare extracted through drilling into the deep time of extreme cryogenic environments, icecores become speculative devices to conceive of climates past and future. An analysisof ice-coring practices and technologies as time capsules or temporal probes allowsfor a novel way of thinking about the temporal materialities of ice and its vibrancies anddistributive agency, and how the material-semiotic entanglements of ice-coring practicesbecome a way of listening to the call of matter.
References
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Barad, K. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321
____. 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
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Carey, M. 2007. “The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species.” Environmental History 12 (3): 497–527. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/12.3.497
Clark, N. 2010. “Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies: Confronting Abrupt Climate Change.” Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3): 31–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409356000
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Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 2004 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. London and New York: Continuum.
Dixon, E. J., M. E. Callanan, A. Hafner and P. G. Hare. 2014. “The Emergence of Glacial Archaeology.” Journal of Glacial Archaeology 1 (1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1558/jga.v1i1.1
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Elzinga, A. 2017. “Polar Ice Cores: Climate Change Messengers.” In Research Objects in Their Technological Setting, edited by B. Bensaude Vincent, S. Loeve, A. Nordmann and A. Schwarz, 215–231. London: Pickering & Chatto.
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____. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373780
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Hemmings, A. D. 2017. “Subglacial Nationalism.” Paper presented at Depths and Surfaces: International Conference of the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research Humanities and Social Sciences Expert Group, Hobart, Australia, 5–7 July.
Hudson, M. J., M. Aoyama, K. C. Hoover, and J. Uchiyama. 2012. “Prospects and Challenges for an Archaeology of Global Climate Change.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3 (2): 313–328. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.174
Hulme, M. 2013. “How Climate Models Gain and Exercise Authority.” In The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, edited by K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup, 33–44. London and New York: Routledge.
Hunt, G. 2016. “Minister Hunt Launches Australian Antarctic Strategy: Video Transcript”, 27 April. Available online: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2016/a-new-era-of-antarctic-endeavour#v181038
Huss, M. and D. Farinotti. 2012. “Distributed Ice Thickness and Volume of All Glaciers around the Globe.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 117 (F4): Art. F04010. https://doi.org/10.1029/2012JF002523
Ingold, T. 2007. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127
____. 2012. “Toward an Ecology of Materials.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (1): 427–442. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145920
Joughin, I., W. Abdalati and M. Fahnestock. 2004. “Large Fluctuations in Speed on Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbræ Glacier.” Nature 432: 608–610. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03130
____., B. E. Smith and B. Medley. 2014. “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica.” Science 344 (6185): 735–738. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1249055
Jouzel, J., C. Lorius and D. Raynaud. 2013. The White Planet: The Evolution and Future of our Frozen World. Translated by T. L. Fagan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400844692
Lane, P. J., 2015. “Archaeology in the Age of the Anthropocene: A Critical Assessment of its Scope and Societal Contributions.” Journal of Field Archaeology 40 (5): 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1179/2042458215Y.0000000022
Langway, C. C., Jr. 2008. “The History of Early Polar Ice Cores.” Cold Regions Science and Technology 52 (2): 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2008.01.001
Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London and New York: Routledge.
Marshall, Y. and B. Alberti. 2014. “A Matter of Difference: Karen Barad, Ontology and Archaeological Bodies.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24 (1): 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774314000067
Martin-Nielsen, J. 2013. “‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled’: Ice Cores and the Cold War in Greenland.” Annals of Science 70 (1): 47–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2012.721123
McKie, R. 2016. “Scientists Fly Glacial Ice to South Pole to Unlock Secrets of Global Warming.” The Observer (London), 27 March. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/27/saving-glaciers-ice-cores-shipped-mont-blanc-antarctica-climate-change
O’Reilly, J. 2016. “Sensing the ice: Field Science, Models, and Expert Intimacy with Knowledge.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22(S1): 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12392
Pollard, D. and R. M. DeConto. 2009. “Modelling West Antarctic Ice Sheet Growth and Collapse through the Past Five Million Years.” Nature 458 (7236): 329–332. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07809
Radin, J. and E. Kowal. 2017. “Introduction: The Politics of Low Temperature.” In Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World, edited by J. Radin and E. Kowal, 3–26. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Skrydstrup, M. 2017. “Envisioning the Future by Predicting the Past: Proxies, Praxis and Prognosis in Paleoclimatology.” Futures 92: 70–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2017.03.004
Sörlin, S. 2015. “Cryo-History: Narratives of Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities.” In The New Arctic, edited by B. Evengård, J. Nymand Larsen and Ø. Paasche, 327–339. Cham, Switzerland, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17602-4_24
Tolia-Kelly, D. P. 2013. “The Geographies of Cultural Geography III: Material Geographies, Vibrant Matters and Risking Surface Geographies.” Progress in Human Geography 37 (1):153–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512439154
Tsing, A. 2005. Friction: An Anthropology of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Voosen, P. 2007. “2.7-Million-Year-Old Ice Opens Window on Past.” Science 357 (6352): 630–631. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.357.6352.630
Waters, C. N., J. Zalasiewicz, C. Summerhayes, A. D. Barnosky, C. Poirier, A. Ga?uszka, A. Cearreta, M. Edgeworth, E. C. Ellis, M. Ellis, C. Jeandel, R. Leinfelder, J. R. McNeill, D. de B. Richter, W. Steffen, J. Syvitski, D. Vidas, M. Wagreich, M. Williams, A. Zhisheng, J. Grinevald, E. Odada, N. Oreskes and A. P. Wolfe 2016. “The Anthropocene is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene.” Science 351 (6269) aad2622: 1–10.
Alley, R. B. 2000. The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Antonello, A. 2016. “Engaging and Narrating the Antarctic Ice Sheet: The History of an Earthly Body.” Environmental History 22 (1): 77–100. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emw070
____. and M. Carey. 2017. “Ice Cores and the Temporalities of the Global Environment.” Environmental Humanities 9 (2): 181–203.
Balog, J. 2012. Ice: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers. New York: Rizzoli.
Barad, K. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3): 801–831. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321
____. 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
Bennett, J. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822391623
Bravo, M. 2017. “A Cryopolitics to Reclaim Our Frozen Material States.” In Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World, edited by J. Radin and E. Kowal, 27–57. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Carey, M. 2007. “The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species.” Environmental History 12 (3): 497–527. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/12.3.497
Clark, N. 2010. “Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies: Confronting Abrupt Climate Change.” Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3): 31–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409356000
Connolly, W. E. 2013. “The ‘New Materialism’ and the Fragility of Things.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 399–412. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829813486849
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari. 2004 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. London and New York: Continuum.
Dixon, E. J., M. E. Callanan, A. Hafner and P. G. Hare. 2014. “The Emergence of Glacial Archaeology.” Journal of Glacial Archaeology 1 (1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1558/jga.v1i1.1
Dodds, K. 2017. “‘Awkward Antarctic Nationalism’: Bodies, Ice Cores and Gateways in and beyond Australian Antarctic Territory/East Antarctica.” Polar Record 53 (1): 16–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000516
Doel, R. E. 2016. “Defending the North American Continent: Why the Physical Environmental Sciences Mattered in Cold War Greenland.” In Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice, edited by R. E. Doel, K. C. Harper and M. Heymann, 25–46. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59688-8_2
Dumont, M., E. Brun, G. Picard, M. Michou, Q. Libois, J.-R. Petit, M. Geyer, S. Morin and B. Josse. 2014. “Contribution of Light-Absorbing Impurities in Snow to Greenland’s Darkening since 2009.” Nature Geoscience 7 (7): 509–512. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2180
Elzinga, A. 2017. “Polar Ice Cores: Climate Change Messengers.” In Research Objects in Their Technological Setting, edited by B. Bensaude Vincent, S. Loeve, A. Nordmann and A. Schwarz, 215–231. London: Pickering & Chatto.
Haraway, D. J. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
____. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373780
Hastrup, K. 2013. “Anticipating Nature: The Productive Uncertainty of Climate Models.” In The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, edited by K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup, 1–29. London and New York: Routledge.
Hemmings, A. D. 2017. “Subglacial Nationalism.” Paper presented at Depths and Surfaces: International Conference of the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research Humanities and Social Sciences Expert Group, Hobart, Australia, 5–7 July.
Hudson, M. J., M. Aoyama, K. C. Hoover, and J. Uchiyama. 2012. “Prospects and Challenges for an Archaeology of Global Climate Change.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 3 (2): 313–328. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.174
Hulme, M. 2013. “How Climate Models Gain and Exercise Authority.” In The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature, edited by K. Hastrup and M. Skrydstrup, 33–44. London and New York: Routledge.
Hunt, G. 2016. “Minister Hunt Launches Australian Antarctic Strategy: Video Transcript”, 27 April. Available online: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2016/a-new-era-of-antarctic-endeavour#v181038
Huss, M. and D. Farinotti. 2012. “Distributed Ice Thickness and Volume of All Glaciers around the Globe.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 117 (F4): Art. F04010. https://doi.org/10.1029/2012JF002523
Ingold, T. 2007. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127
____. 2012. “Toward an Ecology of Materials.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (1): 427–442. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145920
Joughin, I., W. Abdalati and M. Fahnestock. 2004. “Large Fluctuations in Speed on Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbræ Glacier.” Nature 432: 608–610. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03130
____., B. E. Smith and B. Medley. 2014. “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica.” Science 344 (6185): 735–738. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1249055
Jouzel, J., C. Lorius and D. Raynaud. 2013. The White Planet: The Evolution and Future of our Frozen World. Translated by T. L. Fagan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400844692
Lane, P. J., 2015. “Archaeology in the Age of the Anthropocene: A Critical Assessment of its Scope and Societal Contributions.” Journal of Field Archaeology 40 (5): 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1179/2042458215Y.0000000022
Langway, C. C., Jr. 2008. “The History of Early Polar Ice Cores.” Cold Regions Science and Technology 52 (2): 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2008.01.001
Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London and New York: Routledge.
Marshall, Y. and B. Alberti. 2014. “A Matter of Difference: Karen Barad, Ontology and Archaeological Bodies.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24 (1): 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774314000067
Martin-Nielsen, J. 2013. “‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled’: Ice Cores and the Cold War in Greenland.” Annals of Science 70 (1): 47–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2012.721123
McKie, R. 2016. “Scientists Fly Glacial Ice to South Pole to Unlock Secrets of Global Warming.” The Observer (London), 27 March. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/27/saving-glaciers-ice-cores-shipped-mont-blanc-antarctica-climate-change
O’Reilly, J. 2016. “Sensing the ice: Field Science, Models, and Expert Intimacy with Knowledge.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22(S1): 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12392
Pollard, D. and R. M. DeConto. 2009. “Modelling West Antarctic Ice Sheet Growth and Collapse through the Past Five Million Years.” Nature 458 (7236): 329–332. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07809
Radin, J. and E. Kowal. 2017. “Introduction: The Politics of Low Temperature.” In Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World, edited by J. Radin and E. Kowal, 3–26. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Skrydstrup, M. 2017. “Envisioning the Future by Predicting the Past: Proxies, Praxis and Prognosis in Paleoclimatology.” Futures 92: 70–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2017.03.004
Sörlin, S. 2015. “Cryo-History: Narratives of Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities.” In The New Arctic, edited by B. Evengård, J. Nymand Larsen and Ø. Paasche, 327–339. Cham, Switzerland, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17602-4_24
Tolia-Kelly, D. P. 2013. “The Geographies of Cultural Geography III: Material Geographies, Vibrant Matters and Risking Surface Geographies.” Progress in Human Geography 37 (1):153–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512439154
Tsing, A. 2005. Friction: An Anthropology of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Voosen, P. 2007. “2.7-Million-Year-Old Ice Opens Window on Past.” Science 357 (6352): 630–631. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.357.6352.630
Waters, C. N., J. Zalasiewicz, C. Summerhayes, A. D. Barnosky, C. Poirier, A. Ga?uszka, A. Cearreta, M. Edgeworth, E. C. Ellis, M. Ellis, C. Jeandel, R. Leinfelder, J. R. McNeill, D. de B. Richter, W. Steffen, J. Syvitski, D. Vidas, M. Wagreich, M. Williams, A. Zhisheng, J. Grinevald, E. Odada, N. Oreskes and A. P. Wolfe 2016. “The Anthropocene is Functionally and Stratigraphically Distinct from the Holocene.” Science 351 (6269) aad2622: 1–10.
Published
2018-06-04
Issue
Section
Research Articles
How to Cite
Salazar, J. F. (2018). Ice Cores as Temporal Probes. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 5(1), 32-43. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33538
