2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
intermingled with extinct bison bones at Folsom, New Mexico, provided
evidence that humans had once coexisted with these extinct mammals. Today
many scientists interpret such “mass kill sites” as evidence for a human role in
these extinctions. However, few scientists considered this possibility until the
1960s. Instead, they theorized that postglacial climate changes were
responsible. Nineteenth-century European scientists, in contrast, were quick
to link humans to late Pleistocene extinctions. In the late 1850s, similar
discoveries convinced most scientists that humans and extinct animals had
once coexisted. Almost immediately, many prominent English and French
scientists argued that humans had contributed to these extinctions. In this paper,
I argue that twentieth-century paleontologists and paleoecologists were
reluctant to consider a human role in late Pleistocene extinctions because
humans fell outside their traditional concerns and explanatory mechanisms.
In other words, they assumed that natural scientists studied nature rather than
humans. And because archaeologists and anthropologists rarely addressed
changes in nature as sweeping as mass extinctions, the question of a human
role remained in mostly unexplored terrain between the natural and human
sciences. Three American scientists (Edwin Colbert, Loren Eiseley, and Carl
Sauer) publicly discussed this question at length between 1927 and 1957. By
examining the popular and technical works of these scientists, I argue that the
process of preparing exhibits and writing works for general audiences
encouraged communication between the natural and human sciences on the
question of a human role in these extinctions. I show that popularization by
scientists, which is often dismissed as a harmless but inconsequential diversion,
can promote interdisciplinary collaboration and shape scientific knowledge.
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Eckhardt Fuchs Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The Mechanics of Transnational Science:
The Escuela Internacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia Americanas (EIAEA)
and the Scientific Exploration of pre-Columbian Mexico
As a result of longstanding efforts by the German-American anthropologist
Franz Boas, in 1911 the International School for American Archaeology and
Ethnology was founded in Mexico City as an international research institution.
Three US American universities and one scientific society, the German, French,
and Mexican governments , and later several European institutions participated
in the work of the EIAEA. In tracing the short history of this institute (1905-
1920), the paper investigates the mechanics of transnational scientific
cooperation. It was founded at a time when European and American scholars
started to explore the pre-Columbian history of Mexico and when Mexico
became a political battlefield of the imperialist rivalry between the USA and
Europe. In the paper I will show that the initiative for the establishment of the
EIAEA was based on the idea of uniting and centralizing the research on pre-
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