Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
Denis Byrne, Western Sydney University, d.byrne@westernsydney.edu.au
Akira Matsuda, University of Tokyo, amatsuda@l.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Climate change and the broader environmental crisis might have been expected to have provoked, in the field of archaeological heritage, a re-evaluation of the technological and infrastructural legacy of the industrial era. Instead, from historic steam engines and coalmines to hydro dams and concrete highways, these objects are still overwhelmingly regarded as constituting a material record of human technological progress. This session characterises such objects as technofossils of the Anthropocene. While often hailed in their own time as technological achievements, in various ways they have come to constitute a burdensome inheritance for present and future generations, reverberating in ways neither necessarily foreseen nor desired.
The session applies an archaeological lens to industrialism, capitalism, climate change and the material footprint of the Anthropocene. In disciplinary terms, the session spans the fields of the archaeology of the contemporary past, industrial archaeology, the archaeology of the Anthropocene, and critical heritage studies. The session invites papers that address particular types of infrastructure, dating from the Industrial Revolution through the twentieth century, that have contributed to the predicament of the Anthropocene, including those, such as hydro dams, coastal reclamations, plastic production facilities, highways, oil and gas field infrastructure, mines, and fossil fuel burning power stations whose proliferation since the 1950s represent the material footprint of the Great Acceleration. The session also invites archaeological studies of particular materials, such a concrete, aluminium and plastic that have proliferated in the Anthropocene. The session aims to provoke and contribute to the reassessment of the material legacy of industrialism, address the emergence of historical narratives that counter the doctrine of Progress, and examine archaeology’s role in this field of critique.
Papers:
Computer Classics: Rebooting Artefacts for the Next Generation
Christine Finn, MA (Oxon), Independent scholar, writer; Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, UK
The core of this paper is the transformation of redundant technology as a subject of academic, and intellectual engagement. In 2001 I published a book inspired by what was then an emerging field, retro technology—Artifacts: An Archaeologist’s Year in Silicon Valley (MIT Press 2001/02). As I prepare for its 25th anniversary, and to revisit my fieldwork and sources, this paper discusses the original fieldwork and reflects on what happened next as junked computers morphed into artefacts collected by museums. And those researched by contemporary archaeologists, who situated them in the wider field of old technology, one including mobile phones, video games, and virtual artefacts. I will draw on interviews with collectors in both US and internationally, including Japan, and the fieldwork I have continued, and to think and write about, since 2000.
Coastal Reclamations and the Material Footprint of the Anthropocene
Denis Byrne, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia
The coastal infill reclamations which now occupy significant portions of the world’s coastline are ‘technofossils’ of the Anthropocene, artefacts of capitalism’s drive to turn all space to profit, including in this case pushing the limits of the land out into the sea, terrestrialising the marine habitat of nonhuman others. Although the infill deposit of a reclamation is unitary in the sense of being laid down at a single ‘moment’ in time, often new reclamations are added to the outer edges of existing ones, leading to the situation found in Hong Kong, Tokyo Bay and elsewhere where a series of cojoined reclamations, created at different points over the last two centuries, form a horizontal ‘stratigraphic’ order.
In applying a stratigraphic optic to coastal reclamations, the paper agues for the role of archaeology in helping us obtain a critical distance on the material footprint of the Anthropocene. Stepping away from the grand narrative of technological progress that still informs much of the interpretation of industrial heritage, the paper promotes not a dystopic account but one that helps document the processes and events leading to humans becoming a major planetary force with consequences both positive and catastrophic.
Reassessing Coastal Reclamation in Tokyo Bay
Akira Matsuda, University of Tokyo, Japan
Coastal reclamation has been a defining feature of industrial and urban expansion, particularly in Tokyo Bay, where landfilling began in the medieval period but accelerated dramatically in the 1950s, reshaping the coastline on an unprecedented scale. Kasai Marine Park, located offshore in Edogawa Ward, Tokyo, and extending two kilometres into the ocean, exemplifies both the ambitions and unintended consequences of reclamation. Developed as a response to urbanisation-driven environmental degradation, the park was designed to balance ecological conservation with recreational use. However, its creation involved extensive dredging, sediment relocation, and artificial beach construction, illustrating the paradox of engineered nature in the Anthropocene.
This paper examines Tokyo Bay’s reclamation projects, with a focus on Kasai Marine Park, through historical and archaeological analysis of the composition and transformation of the reclaimed landscapes. By considering these landscapes as physical archives of industrialism and urbanism, this study explores how areas initially envisioned as solutions to urban and environmental pressures have become sites of ecological concern. The designation of Kasai Marine Park’s tidal flats as a Ramsar site in 2018 underscores the evolving perception of these landscapes—not just as engineered landforms, but as critical ecological zones requiring conservation efforts.