The field and its prosthesis: Archiving Arctic ecologies in the 1920s. ...

• Main Author: Bruun, Johanne M
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2022
• Subjects: 4406 Human Geography; 44 Human Society; Arctic; Svalbard; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.93451; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/346029

This paper examines the topological entanglements between the naturalistic field and natural history archives, arguing that the spatial categories of 'field' and 'archive' should be considered in terms of their indexical relations. Conceptually, it points to the prosthetic qualities of the archive, namely its capacity to simultaneously delimit and expand the field by facilitating novel ways of seeing and knowing it. The field, in turn, is a necessary source of plant and animal matter without which there is no archive. Bringing together geographical literatures on 'field' and 'archive' with literature on cultures and practices of collecting, this intervention is at once conceptual and empirical. The conceptual debate is hinged to, and inspired by, the practices of collecting, classifying, and ordering Arctic ecologies by the three Oxford University Arctic Expeditions to Spitsbergen (now Svalbard) in 1921-24. These expeditions have been hailed as significant episodes in the history of ecology. While ecology as ...