Alejandro Camargo and Catherine Russell (online) will discuss their ongoing work, followed by an open conversation about the possibilities for an interdisciplinary approach to sediments. The organizers hope this will provide a nice opportunity to further develop a cross-campus dialogue across disciplines.
The event will be hybrid. Zoom link here: https://uio.zoom.us/j/62794420211?pwd=f9DX0UXJnkaWl5CA5fuGFegDj2ktq0.1
Reading sediments: explorations on a climate frontier
Alejandro Camargo (Assistant professor of Environmental and Caribbean Studies, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia)
Sediments are materials that tell stories about the past. For climatologists, paleoecologists, and archaeologists, sediments are natural archives that preserve particles of organic and inorganic matter accumulated over time. Reading these natural archives provides insight into the climate, environmental changes, and anthropogenic transformations of the past. For historians, literary scholars and social scientists, sediments have served as a metaphor for understanding the human experience transpiring in historical time. But what type of human experiences and stories emerge when sediment intervenes not merely as a metaphor, but as a mundane substance that seeps into, and often disrupts, everyday life? What dwelling in and engaging with dynamic landscapes, where sediment constantly changes mean to different subjects in the face of climate uncertainty?
(Online) Geological Disruption and the Limits of Similarity
Catherine Russel (Visiting Fellow in Physical Geography at Loughborough University)
Comparing the present to the past, indeed, comparing any episodes of geological history, confronts geologists with needing to assess both continuity and discontinuity. It is incredibly challenging to account for the entire complex array of geology that we see around us at present, especially integrating the inevitable interdisciplinary overlaps. We must engage with the limits of similarity, and diversify traditional frameworks, so we introduce "discorditarianism" as a complementary principle to uniformitarianism. We assess the ways in which sedimentology is changed today from Holocene conditions and draw on traditional sedimentological approaches to sediment classification to delineate a method for describing anthropogenic materials and facies. Through these approaches, we find the emerging sub-discipline of Anthropocene Sedimentology, which allows for contemporary challenges and complexities to be integrated into a broader understanding of geological history.