Metals, Minerals, and the Life Cycle

As a distinct group of materials, metals and minerals have sparked curiosity and ignited interest about their provenance and their use and reuse in scientific, technological, cultural, and socio-economic settings and for magico-medicinal purposes. We use the concept of life cycles to probe into the complex intertwining of both issues in the histories and historiographies of metals and minerals. In this context, life cycle encompasses a) the journey of metals and minerals from exploration, discovery, extraction, processing and smelting (for metals) and beneficiation (for minerals), and reclamation; b) their use in different geographical and cultural contexts and for different purposes (i.e., alum from the island of Lesbos in the Eastern Mediterranean was used as a fixative for dying fabrics in Italy, but also to preserve leather, to treat paper, and in candle making); c) and their role in the lives of individuals and communities.

Provenance: how this group of materials informed boundaries drawn between different geographies of knowledge and their knowledge fields in Europe, Asia, and Africa
Use and re-use: the legacy of metals and minerals, their repurposing and recycling
Reciprocity between provenance and use histories.

In nearly all pre-1700 historical cultures, metals and minerals were not just linked but intimately intertwined with Agriculture and the Making of Science. Cultures across Asia, Africa, and Europe pondered over the mysteries of how soils generated metals, mineral veins grew beneath the earth like trees on earth, ores spread seeds, and salts were extracted from water or plowed from the ground. Scholars singled out metals and minerals as a group distinguishable from plants, vegetables, animals, or humans because of their stable properties and long material persistence. At the same time, craftsmen, farmers, laborers, and artisans probed their uses and re-uses: They struck coins, carved statues and gems, and made everyday tools such as pots, plows, or hoes from gold, iron, silver, copper, and their alloys. Some minerals and metals were recognized as extraordinary and utilized as agents to heal or poison bodies, to add color to textiles and ceramics, to treat paper or make pigments for painting.

Who is part of Metals, Minerals, and the Life Cycle?

This project has been developed by Dagmar Schäfer, Pamela Smith, Tina Asmussen, and Eurydice Georganteli, in collaboration with the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University and Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (the Research Unit for Mining History at the German Mining Museum Bochum). Key aspects of this collaboration include academic exchanges, joint research projects, co-authored publications, and opportunities for junior scholars to engage in research across institutions. The project aims to engage disciplines such as archaeology, material science, and museum curation.

Reading Group

The working group holds regular sessions of a reading group to discuss scholarship on themes like the extraction and use of metal ores and mineral deposits, conceptions of value and economy, and the dynamics of circulation, reuse, and trade. Sessions are structured around a set of central questions pertaining to the project’s colloquium series: 1) Making and Unmaking Value; 2) Crafted Forms and Skillful Doing; 3) Assaying and the Sensorium; and, 4) Raw Materials and Residues. We seek to approach this broad set of themes from a variety of disciplinary standpoints — historical, archaeological, and anthropological — and address debates that emerge in scholarship from across several regions. This reading group is convened with our external collaborators.

Please contact Anthony Quickel or Mannat Johal for more information.