Thinking Locally, Interpreting Globally: Power, Place, and Knowledge at the Agate Fossil Beds and Beyond

• In Event: Grounding Knowledge in Place: Earth Scientists and Surveyors, Fieldwork, and the Geography of Power

Abstract

Environmental historians have long been interested both in the stories of specific local places and the role of global scientific knowledge in better understanding them. But how did field scientists who came to more closely know specific places over time negotiate the tension between local environmental particularity and the more globally informed interpretations that have often been favored by other scientists? And how have they interacted with people who live in the field? This paper seeks to address these questions by considering the liminal case of the paleontologist Harold J. Cook, who grew up on a ranch in western Nebraska near the Agate Fossil Beds, but who also pursued a career as a field scientist, studying as far away as New York City, collaborating with eastern museums, and ultimately accepting a position at the Colorado Museum of Natural History (later known as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science). Nevertheless, Cook’s career was constrained by his desire to maintain control over his family’s ranch and by an epistemic commitment to placing the Agate Fossil Beds at the center of his interpretations of other fossil sites. Moreover, he worked very hard to collect and display fossil remains on site rather than sending them to distant museums. By comparing Cook’s “practices of place” with other paleontologists who were based in eastern cities, I aim to uncover the power relations in an especially prominent field science of the early twentieth century, focusing on the movement of Cook and other paleontologists between different environments, as well as the structural limitations imposed by the larger power relations of paleontological science.

Author

• Jeremy Vetter, University of Arizona