Doing History in the Science Museum, Part I: Specimens 70750 (mammoth hair and skin) and 70790 (mammoth hair)

The California Academy of Sciences is a veritable mega-museum. More than just a research academy as it was originally intended to be when founded in 1853, it is now comprised of a natural history museum, aquarium, planetarium, and even an indoor, human-made rainforest.[1] Out of many possible reasons to visit the Academy, I went there this past summer to see two particular specimens: 70750 (mammoth hair and skin) and 70790 (mammoth hair). Originally extracted from frozen gravel in Alaska and Siberia, respectively, these two soft fossils now rest in the temperate drawers of the California Academy of Sciences’ vast Geology storeroom, surrounded by other mammoth and mastodon remains of bone, tusk, and tooth.[2]

California Academy of Sciences

In 1989, Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer introduced the idea of “boundary objects,” scientific objects that occupy and fulfil requirements of various “intersecting social worlds” while also maintaining an internal consistency across these realms.[3] As research objects, mammoth hair and skin fulfil these requirements as they span a variety of scientific fields and their cognate museum collection areas. They are fossil remains of extinct prehistoric mammals, and thus could theoretically fall under the purview of geology, paleontology, mammalogy, or zoology.

In the case of the California Academy of Sciences, all these possible connections to different fields and museum areas are not mere hypotheticals. In fact, specimen 70750 was previously part of the Academy’s Ornithology and Mammalogy collection before being moved to Geology in 2009. Even the initial acquisitions of the specimens by the museum represent diverse worlds. 70750 was donated from another research institution, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, while 70790 was purchased at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show in 2008. These divergent origins indicate that while mammoth remains are certainly of scientific interest, they also exist within the commodified realm of rare and marvelous gemstones: woolen jewels extracted from ice and earth.

It is for these reasons that natural historical museum specimens are often exemplary boundary objects. As Star and Griesemer explain, they are “simultaneously concrete and abstract, specific and general, conventionalized and customized.”[4] In essence, they mean many things to many people, whether that refers – in the case of 70750 and 70790 – to the people who found them in ice, those who bought, sold, or donated them, the scientists who study them across disciplines, or a heterogeneous public (myself included). Yet in moving from the natural world of Alaskan and Siberian ice through these various social worlds, the specimens remain, at their core, material echoes of extinct animals.

California Academy of Sciences

Like the specimens I was visiting, my research at the Academy did not fit easily within any one category. Of course, I hoped to gain a historical understanding of them by looking into their individual provenances. But also, I simply wanted to meet them (so to speak) and to understand their present place in the Academy. To do this, I looked closely at their material forms and museological trimmings: the bags, tags, and boxes that structure contemporary understanding. 

What I found were physical substantiations of boundary-ness. 70750’s specimen card mentioned the object’s previous name (15652) from its time in the Ornithology and Mammalogy collection. On 70790’s card, the distant gem and mineral show was evoked through a penciled-in note. And embedded within the fur of both specimens were bits of dirt and plant matter, vestiges of their earthy pre-museum origins

I also found the specimens’ boundaries merging with my own as 70750, 70790, and I all share hair that is of the same gingery hue. Handling the these objects, then, bred an unexpected sense of kinship between researcher and specimen.

In looking closely at the materiality of even these fragmentary remains, some boundaries surrounding frozen mammoths begin to emerge. Yet, the “intersecting social worlds” of these two specimens represent just a handful of the many meanings that mammoths have held for humans over time. Certainly, there’s much more looking to be had.

A full specimen report with additional photos can be found here.

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[1]. “Our History,” California Academy of Sciences, accessed November 7, 2022, https://www.calacademy.org/our-history.

[2]. The term “fossil” connotes – at least for me – the ossified stuff of Earth (bones, stones, shells), though really it encompasses any primeval remains pulled from the earth.

[3]. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 393. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001.

[4]. Star and Greisemer, “Institutional Ecology,” 408.