The ERC-funded project "Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropology for the Anthropocene (AMBER)" considers the multiple and entangled worlds of amber through ethnographic research in different sites of extraction, trade, and science.
Amber is a fossil resin secreted by plants between 300 and 16 million years ago, mostly during phases of climate breakdown and ecological crises. Amber is today found and studied across the world for the prehistoric lifeforms it contains. Their study, geologists and paleontologists believe, can help us answering key questions about the planet’s climatic history, and understanding how and why species adapted, or failed to adapt, during previous phases of mass extinction. Amber is also a well-known and sought-after gemstone, fueling violent mining economies from Myanmar to Russia, Ukraine and Mexico, and constitutes a global market increasingly driven by Chinese demand.
Amber thus offers a unique entry point to interrogate the current moment characterised by growing extractivism, trade, environmental crises, and conflict. Through amber, this project further aims to pay closer ethnographic attention to the geological, to what continues to be understood as inert, passive, lifeless - and thus to address some of the key empirical and theoretical challenges posed by the Anthropocene.
Project members tackle those issues through long-term ethnographic research in China, Burma/Myanmar, Lebanon, Mexico, and various European sites. We work with miners and traders, paleontologists and artists, as well as with local scholars and researchers. To learn more about the overall project please visit the ABOUT page. You can also find more detailed information on our individual sub-projects in the AMBER BURSTS page.
