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Article ID: CBB001250840

The Fossil Trade: Paying a Price for Human Origins (2012)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 103, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 340-355

DOI: 10.1086/666365

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a Focus Section: Follow the Money: Networks, Peers, and Patronage in the History of Science
Language: English

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Collectors and collecting Fossils Patronage Paleoanthropology Science and economics 19th century 20th century

Fossils have been traded for centuries. Over the past two hundred years the market has developed into an organized enterprise, with fossils serving multiple functions as objects of scientific study, collectors' items, and investments. Finding fossils, digging them up or purchasing them, transporting, studying, and conserving them, and putting them on display was and still is expensive. Since the early nineteenth century, funding bodies, academic institutions and museums, philanthropists, dealers, collectors, amateurs, and professional paleontologists have constituted elaborate networks driven by collaboration, necessity, ambition, accolades, and capital to generate knowledge and produce geological artifacts, increasing our understanding of the natural world, advancing careers and institutions, and contributing to personal fortunes. The emergence of paleoanthropology as a scientific discipline around 1900 generated a scientific focus on the human story that was easy to sell. The scarcity of ancient human remains made it close to impossible for a commercial market to evolve, yet finding them required serious funding. Elaborate schemes for financing expeditions and excavations went hand in hand with individual aspirations, patronage, philanthropy, networks, and alliance building, as concession rights and access to sponsors were objects of regular political intrigues and often bitter disputes.

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Description On the trade in fossilized human bones and the emergence of paleoanthropology.

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Article Andersen, Casper; Bek-Thomsen, Jakob; Kjærgaard, Peter C. (2012) The Money Trail: A New Historiography for Networks, Patronage, and Scientific Careers. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 310-315). unapi

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