Everyone is welcome to the next installment of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology Colloquium Series. Oregon State University and UCSB’s Professor Emerita, Anita Guerrini, will be presenting Ivory and Extinction in the Eighteenth Century.

The ivory trade in the eighteenth century was global and included both elephant ivory and tusks (and sometimes bones) from other species. When the physician/anatomist William Hunter began to investigate the ‘American incognitum” in the 1760s he turned to London’s ivory workers to identify and authenticate its enormous tusks. The ‘incognitum’ (literally ‘unknown’) was one example of many assemblages of bones found in the Ohio Valley from the 1730s onward. This paper begins to put together the roles of craftsmen, colonialism, and global trade in the collection and identification of prehistoric animals.

See you in the History of Science Room or join us over Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/7427819149