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

Abstract

The Anthropocene concept frames an emerging new understanding of the human–Earth relationship. It represents a profound temporal integration that brings historical periodization on a par with geological time and creates entanglements between timescales that were previously seen as detached. Because the Anthropocene gets this role of a unifying planetary concept, the ways in which vast geological timescales were incorporated into human history are often taken for granted. By tracing the early history of the processes of synchronizing human and geological timescales, this article aims to historicize the Anthropocene concept. The work of bridging divides between human and geological time was renegotiated and took new directions 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 and biogeography, methodologies that became used in synchronizing planetary timescales were discussed and practiced for integrative understanding well before the Anthropocene concept emerged. This article shows through studies of their theoretical assumptions and research practices that the Anthropocene could be conceived as a result of a longer history of production of integrative geo-anthropological time. It also shows the embedding of concepts and methodologies from neighboring fields of significance for geography. By situating and historicizing spaces and actors, texture is added to the Anthropocene, a concept that has hitherto often been detached from the specific contexts and geographies of the scientific work that enabled its emergence.