Synchronizing Earthly Timescales : Ice,Pollen, and the Making of Proto-Anthropocene Knowledge in the North Atlantic Region

• Published in: Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• Main Authors: Sörlin, Sverker, Isberg, Erik
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: KTH, Historiska studier av teknik, vetenskap och miljö 2020
• Subjects: History; Historia; Environmental Sciences; Miljövetenskap; Ahlmann; Seligman; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-286126; https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1823809

The Anthropocene concept frames an emerging new understanding of the human–Earth relationship. Itrepresents a profound temporal integration that brings historical periodization on a par with geological timeand creates entanglements between timescales that were previously seen as detached. Because theAnthropocene gets this role of a unifying planetary concept, the ways in which vast geological timescaleswere incorporated into human history are often taken for granted. By tracing the early history of theprocesses of synchronizing human and geological timescales, this article aims to historicize the Anthropoceneconcept. The work of bridging divides between human and geological time was renegotiated and took newdirections in physical geography and cognate sciences from the middle decades of the twentieth century.Through researchers such as Ahlmann (Sweden), Seligman (United Kingdom), and Dansgaard (Denmark)in geography and glaciology and Davis (United States) and Iversen (Denmark) in palynology andbiogeography, methodologies that became used in synchronizing planetary timescales were discussed andpracticed for integrative understanding well before the Anthropocene concept emerged. This article showsthrough studies of their theoretical assumptions and research practices that the Anthropocene could beconceived as a result of a longer history of production of integrative geo-anthropological time. It also showsthe embedding of concepts and methodologies from neighboring fields of significance for geography. Bysituating and historicizing spaces and actors, texture is added to the Anthropocene, a concept that hashitherto often been detached from the specific contexts and geographies of the scientific work that enabledits emergence QC 20201124