Article ID: CBB654252561

All Things Bleak and Bare Beneath a Brazen Sky: Practice and Place in the Analysis of Australopithecus (2019)

unapi

The fossilized primate skull known as the Taungs Baby, discovered in South Africa, was put forward in 1925 as a controversial ‘missing link’ between humans and apes. This essay examines the controversy generated by the fossil, with a focus on practice and the circulation of material objects. Viewing the Taungs story from this perspective provides a new outlook on debates, one that suggests that attention to the importance of place, particularly the ways that specific localities shape scientific practices, is crucial to understanding such controversies. During the 1920s, the fossil itself did not move or circulate from its South African location, a fact that raised methodological concerns in understanding its significance and drew immense criticism from a range of experts. Examining the criticisms regarding the fossil’s failure to circulate draws attention to the importance of centers of accumulation in the analysis of hominid fossils. Diverging from existing histories that primarily emphasize the role of theory in paleoanthropological debates, then, this article argues that scientific practice played an important role in the Taungs fossil controversy. Examining this dimension of the debates has broader implications for revealing the underlying imperial assumptions that guided hominid paleontology during the early twentieth century.

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Authors & Contributors
Edward P.F. Rose
Yu, Xiaobo
Colli, Laura
Sandra Cencetti
Cameron, Marlena Briane
Fallon, Richard
Concepts
Fossils
Paleontology
Paleoanthropology
Evolution
Controversies and disputes
Human evolution
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
China
Great Britain
Wyoming (U.S.)
Malta
United States
Spain
Institutions
University of Wyoming
Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Spain)
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