Toxic Heritage: Socio-natural Landscapes of Extraction and Pollution in the Harz and Cornwall

Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum

The German Mining Museum Bochum, founded in 1930, is a Leibniz Research Museum for Georesources and is committed to collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and communicating the material heritage of mining. The museum’s research areas include archaeometallurgy, mining history, materials science, and mining archaeology.

Kresen Kernow

Kresen Kernow (‘Cornwall Centre’) is home to the world’s largest collection of documents, books, maps and photographs related to Cornwall’s history. A state-of-the-art archive centre, built in the shell of the former Redruth Brewery, Kresen Kernow opened in 2019. As well as 14 miles of shelving to store over 1.5 million of Cornwall’s treasured archives, the centre has research and exhibition spaces, learning rooms, preservation and digitisation studios, and a café.

Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology

Through model-based and interpretive approaches, the institute examines the fundamental dynamics and dilemmas that have brought about the multiple crises of the "Anthropocene," humanity's proposed geological epoch, and explores their mutual conditions. The institute pursues cross-disciplinary research projects, e.g. on planetary urbanisation, the global food system, global material, energy and information flows, and human-ecosystem dynamics, and aims to provide a collaborative synthesis service in which data and expertise from various sub-disciplines such as climate research, biodiversity research and the social sciences are brought together, modelled and interpreted (hub model).

UNESCO World Heritage Foundation Harz

The Rammelsberg mine is a unique monument to the history of mining. It is the only mine in the world that can demonstrate over 1,000 years of consistent ore mining. Rammelsberg, the imperial city of Goslar and the Upper Harz Water Management System, the world’s largest and most important pre-industrial energy provision system, together present a fascinating triumvirate of technological and cultural history.

The far-reaching environmental consequences of mining have so far been neglected in its heritage narratives, overshadowed by stories of technological progress and economic development. The project will shift this focus by presenting toxic residues as an integral aspect of mining, constituting a demanding legacy that has influenced centuries of human-nature interactions. It will do so by developing an interdisciplinary, cutting-edge conceptualisation of mining heritage that is underpinned by an ecological standpoint. Unlike previous iterations, this framing will be able to encompass the fundamental dynamics and interactions that have generated the multiple crises of the Anthropocene, humanity's geological epoch.

Toxic Heritage uses an interdisciplinary set of methods and will inform both academic and the broader publics. We will employ ethnographic and archival research across the four study sites in combination with a digital geographic information system (GIS)-based database that will visualise and model the research data. Concurrent activities include the production of creative interventions, public engagement events with local stakeholders and the development of a public-facing touring exhibition that will make mining residues and toxic heritage tangible for local communities.

The project will disseminate its research through academic publications and by establishing a public web presence, supported by regular blog posts and GIS StoryMaps introducing the project's findings.

By combining scientific, cultural, and artistic perspectives, the project seeks to emphasise the results of embracing a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of heritage, one that acknowledges the intertwined relationships between humans and the environment in a longue-durée perspective.

1. Undertake a programme of historical research relating to the four field sites.
2. Undertake a programme of ethnographic research across the four field sites
3. Produce a series of creative artworks responding to the site-specific research.
4. Create and populate a GIS based database with georeferencing, visualisation and modelling capacities.
5. Convene a series of interdisciplinary research forums.
6. Assemble a touring exhibition for venues in The Harz and Cornwall.
7. Deliver tailored public engagement events for targeted audiences.
8. Author a body of academic publications.
9. Promote the project’s findings to diverse audiences

Presentations

“Toxic Heritage and the Carnon River”, a presentation delivered as part of the “Extraction and the Transmutation of What Remains” Panel at Health, Environment & AnThropology (HEAT) 2025, co-organised by Durham and Edinburgh universities and sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute. Held at Durham University, 23-24 April 2025.