HGIS as a Tool for Studying and Doing Interdisciplinary Research on Past Environ
HGIS as a Tool for Studying and Doing Interdisciplinary Research on Past Environments: CUSP Examples
“Finding commonality in the archives”: Critical dendro-provenancing with Empire Trees Climate in Bermuda
“What does it mean to do interdisciplinary research on past environments?”
So asked Kirsten Greer, Adam Csank, and Margot Maddison MacFadyen in their Call for Papers for their special session at the 2017 American Association of Geographers’ (AAG) Annual Meeting. For the three scholars, who collaborated on the Empire Trees and Climate in the British North Atlantic project, including doing archival and dendrochronology fieldwork in Bermuda, doing interdisciplinary research on past environments meant “finding commonalities in the archives,” as recounted by fellow collaborator, Katie Hemsworth, in one of the required readings for this module:
Despite thinking of the archive in different ways – from the more traditional repository of historical records to political sites of cultural production to tree rings and pollen – the scholars were struck by the unexpected connections forged when they began to learn each other’s approaches.(Hemsworth, 2019)
Finding commonalities in the archive, which they also imagined as another type of “field,” meant stepping outside of their comfort zones. For example, Csank, a paleoclimatologist, brought historical geographer Greer along on tree coring pursuits as a research assistant. In those moments, Greer learned new methods and skills, gaining a new appreciation not just for the labour involved, but also for their shared commitment to understanding past environments to shape the future. When it came time for Csank to join Greer in the Bermuda Archives, his assumptions about the utility of archives for his research were challenged when he came across meteorological records that could be used to help reconstruct climates of the past, in conjunction with his tree ring and stable isotope data.
The Empire, Trees, and Climate fieldwork in Bermuda brought together several other scholars, all of whom had some interest in understanding past environments. Maddison-MacFadyen, an interdisciplinary scholar and writer, saw an opportunity to collaborate with Csank to better understand the colonial and environmental histories of a specific residence, called Cavendish, which was made with now-endangered Bermuda cedar. Beyond its connection to the histories of the British North Atlantic timber trade, Cavendish had indelible ties to another, intertwined trade: the histories of enslavement. One such connection was in Cavendish’s association with Bermuda National Hero, Mary Prince, the first known Black woman to escape West Indian enslavement and have her story preserved in written historical record (Prince, 1831).
Thus, another project emerged out of the larger one. Using archives, tree samples, and literary sources to “present an enhanced storytelling of Cavendish,” the team was better positioned to examine the environmental and materia