1 10 9 https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d6764bf36c8a796ded8acbfaca0e3526.JPG 0cc7856a7987afb2059240f05d5de5f3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Scout the Bison Description An account of the resource Scout, the North American Bison on exhibit at the Durham museum in Omaha, NE. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Courtesy of Chelsey Dizon and Kevin Vincent https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/4bd4d45183e12b08efbae31ec8bb0369.jpg 79ba8319364992dac06e370d71987141 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1 Description An account of the resource Scout, the North American Bison on exhibit at the Durham museum in Omaha, NE. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Photo by Chelsey Dizon and Kevin Vincent Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bison Subject The topic of the resource This is Scout, a symbol of the fall and rise of the American Bison. Before westward expansion in the 1800s, between 30-60 million bison roamed the Great Plains. They played an important role in the ecosystems. For example, bison ‘wallowed’ or rolled in the dirt to get rid of insects and to cool off. At the same time, this behavior created depressions that encouraged new plant growth. Bison are central to Native American cultures on the Great Plains. They used bison for food, shelter, clothing, and ceremonies. When European settlers moved west, bison became commodities and hunts grew in size. By 1889, less than 2,000 bison remained. But, recent conservation efforts are increasing their numbers. Nebraska is the second highest producer of bison in the U.S. Although bison will never return to the prominence they once held in the Midwest, their recovery story, which Nebraska is a part of, inspires hope for their future. Description An account of the resource Visitors of the Durham Museum begin their journey through history with Scout. Scout is a North American Bison who has been a part of the Durham collection since 2006 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/33" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). Scout’s story is complicated. On the one hand, he represents bisons' past dominance of the prairies and their erased ecological system. Scout reminds us of the slaughter and near extinction of his species brought about by humans. On the other hand, Scout represents the Bison bison’s slow, but persistent recovery. Both stories are part of the Anthropocene narrative. Human activity, specifically Euroamerican settlement, were the main destructive force behind bisons' near extinction. Slaughtered in the millions for their hides, horns, and meat during the nineteenth century, the rapaciousness of western expansion was certainly culpable for their decline. However, people have also played a major role in bisons' recovery, an often untold but necessary narrative that inspires hope for the future of bison. The bison is an important artifact in Omaha’s environmental history because they were once the dominant keystone species of the grasslands, but now have been reduced to peripheral importance. It links Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene by epitomizing human power over nature. Bison once dominated the Great Plains. According to Colonel Richard I. Dodge, the commander of Fort Dodge, KS in 1851, there were "60 million bison in primitive North America” (D. Lott, 2003). Twenty years after the Civil War, bison population was below two thousand. The dramatic decline of the keystone species had cascading influences across the Plains ecosystems. For example, bison urine, wallowing, and carcasses all uniquely contributed to the ecological health of the Great Plains. According to Flannery, a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the director of the South Australian Museum, "the key to the bison's role in the prairie ecosystem lay in the fact that the great grasslands were piss-driven" (T. Flannery, 2001). Bison urine is essentially "a bath of nitrogen dissolved in water," which means that the urine leaves behind a high concentration of ammonium and nitrate in the soils (D. Lott, 2003). Wallowing, or rolling on the ground, relieved bison of insects and heat. More importantly, this created “compacted bowls of soil that hold rainwater, creating a microenvironment in which seeds can sprout” (D. Lott, 2003). Essentially, bison urine and wallowing laid groundwork for healthy plant growth and diversity. Last, bison carcasses played a key role in the ecology of the Great Plains. Not only are carcasses a food source for other animals, but they release fluids that eventually create “zones of high fertility" (A. Knapp, et. al. 1999). These characteristics exemplify the codependence between the bison and the prairie. The Native Americans were the first humans to interact with the bison. Soon, the tribes of the Great Plains became dependent on bison for hunting. Initially, Native Americans tactics involved disguises that allowed them to hunt with greater accuracy (V. Geist, 1996). However, the introduction of the horse in the 1600s made game driving the gold standard (V. Geist, 1996). Although bison hunting has been part of North American history for centuries, its height was during Euroamerican westward expansion in the 1800s. This expansion propelled the destruction of bison in numerous ways. First, natural catastrophes and Pre-Euroamerican activity impacted bison populations. From drowning when fording a river to the harsh winter weather of the plains, bison faced life-threatening situations constantly. As McHugh, a biologist and zoologist with a background in wildlife management, states, “the ravages of nature were taking a recurrent, at times disastrous, toll of the herds” (T. McHugh, 2004). For example, in 1867 “a herd of four thousand bison attempting to ford the Platte River in Nebraska walked into channels of loose quicksand" (T. McHugh, 2004). As the lead bison were slipping into the sand the remaining herd kept moving, causing the death of two thousand bison. Devastation surged with the increased influence of humans on the herds. For example, “[Paleoindians] would drive a bison herd into a gully, a canyon, or some other natural trap having inescapable sides” (H. P. Danz, 1997). This game driving (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/34" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>), allowed hunters to easily kill large amounts of bison. Particularly, when bison were driven off cliffs and maimed, hunters could finish them off without using ammunition.  Lewis and Clark, two famous westward explorers of the 1800s, described this phenomenon in their journals when they observed a young Indian man deceiving bison herds by disguising himself: the skin of the head with the ears and horns fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffalo … the disguised Indian leads them on at full speed towards the river, when suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff (H. P. Danz, 1997). This manipulation of animals and nature demonstrates the impacts humans had on bison populations during the period. Although Pre-Euroamerican impacts and nature decreased bison populations, it was the industrial revolution that put them in grave danger. The industrial revolution was an important precondition for the decline of bison herds. The introduction of the railroad through the Midwest provided quick and easy transport of people and material. This made the plains more accessible for Euroamericans, and with the romanticizing of bison hunting by many Europeans, much more popular. This idealistic view of wild animals paired with increased access and easy transportation propelled the destruction forward. With the introduction of railways and westward expansion, bison habitat shrank dramatically. With the landscape disappearing, bison herd bunched. This "resulted in harmful competition" especially during times of drought, food shortages, and heavy snow (H. P. Danz, 1997). Furthermore, crowded herds furnished an "easy route for the spread of parasites and disease" such as anthrax and tuberculosis (H. P. Danz, 1997). Prevalent disease paired with other human influences created excellent conditions for hunting, but, by the end of the nineteenth century, led to the near extinction of the North American bison. Slaughtering bison was as much a political act as it was economic and environmental. Euroamerican conflicts with Native Americans prompted the American government to actively hunt and kill bison. Great Plain tribes such as the Sioux, Blackfoot, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Arikara, Pawnee, Wichita, Kiowa, and Comanche depended on the bison for their very existence. The bison served many purposes for them. Although primarily used for food, bison also provided hide for housing, clothing, and bedding; bones, organs, and feces were used as fuel and markers (H. P. Danz, 1997). Native Americans placed religious importance and mystical symbolism on bison, especially white bison. Occasionally, an albino or light cream-colored bison would materialize in a herd “an event that nearly always resulted in the eventual killing, or sacrifice, of the animal, followed by ritualistic and religious ceremonies” (H. P. Danz, 1997). Knowing that these tribes revered and depended on bison, the American government targeted bison as a way to undermine Native American culture and reduce their populations. In 1873, for instance, President Grant's Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano wrote, "'I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western prairies, in its effect upon the Indians' … the destruction of the herds would have a beneficial effect in reducing Indian resistance"(S. M. Taylor, 2011). Although no official statement from the Army states they intentionally targeted bison, it was clear through their eagerness to break Indian resistance. Railroads, from a tactical perspective, also played a large role in their late nineteenth century decline. When it was discovered that the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads interfered with bison territory, military commanders increased their pressure on bison herds. This strategy cleared the path for railroads and undermined Native American societies in the area. In the words of Army General Philip Sheridan, "I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen of England and America this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt" (D. D. Smits, 1994). Military commanders also deliberately permitted their troops to kill bison in order to decimate the Native American frontier. After all, the bison and the Plains tribes were inseparable and the bison were an easier target. The destruction of the bison was a political and economic act that fundamentally reshaped the human ecology of the Great Plains.  Even though human involvement and natural catastrophes devastated bison herds throughout the United States, the force driving the slaughter of bison was capitalism. Because the supply of bison was so plentiful and the railroads made shipping quicker, companies, such as the American Fur Company, could "sell the [bison fur] robes at a moderate price and still reap profit" (Isenberg, 2000). This, however, put "heavy pressure on the herds" themselves (Isenberg, 2000). Ultimately, profits depended less on the price of the robes than "on the sheer volume shipped east" (Isenberg, 2000). According to environmental historian Andrew Isenberg, the Native Americans participated in the bison robe trade. Native Americans also participated in the beaver fur trade that spanned between the late 1600s to the early 1800s. Similar to the bison trade, the Euroamericans prized beaver fur and Native American tribes hunted beaver for food. However, other game, such as muskrat, mink, otter, and lynx were available in the case of beaver shortages (A. J. Ray, 2017). The difference between the bison fur trade and the beaver fur trade was that the nomadic lifestyle of the bison was mirrored by the Native Americans on the Great Plains. Thus, even though Native American tribes participated in the beaver trade, the tribes on the Great Plains experienced greater difficulties when they transformed their main source of livelihood, the bison, into capital. From the Euroamerican perspective, Native American involvement benefited the American Fur Company so much that by 1835, “an average of over 130,000” bison robes were shipped per year (Isenberg, 2000). This, in conjunction with the fixed low robe prices, made profits dependent on the volume of bison robes rather than on their prices. These industrial pressures caused the western plains to become “a remote extension of the global industrial economy and an object of its demand for natural resources" (Isenberg, 2000). This exploitation nearly brought the North American bison to extinction, all the while fueling the United States’ global economy.  The story of the downfall of the bison is a sad one. By 1889, there were only “1,089 bison left in North America” (H. R. Harris, 1920). The diagram pictured above (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/36" title="Figure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>) shows the decline of bison herds after Euroamerican expansion in1889. However, a more recent history, of which Scout is a part of, is hopeful. Today, “approximately 500,000 bison live across North America” (Defenders.org, “Basic Facts About Bison"). Populations persisted in Canada and, surprisingly, on Catalina Island. 23 bison were brought to this foreign island to film a movie, but ended up staying when 22 new bison were imported to Catalina Island between 1969 and 1971 to mix with the island herd and maintain population health (R. A. Sweitzer, et. al. 2005). Again, bison were saved from near extinction “in the late 1800s by 5 private herds established by ranchers and by a sixth herd at the New York Zoological Park”, meaning that the present-day plains bison population is “descended from less than 100 founders” (P. W. Hedrick, 2009). Because the number of bison remaining on the continent was so limited, conservation promoted hybridization between bison and cattle. Breeding bison with cattle resulted in a changed population, however. A scientific study demonstrated that in both a nutritionally poor environment (Santa Catalina Island, California) and a nutritionally rich environment (Montana), bison with cattle mtDNA had lower body weights and were shorter than their counterparts with bison mtDNA (J. N. Derr, et. al. 2012). Although this decreases the bison's overall fitness due to the smaller stature, it keeps alive some degree of bison. Some critics complain that this does not stay true to conserving organic bison, but this is a critical step in the right direction for the conservation of bison in modern times.  These early successes prompted a wave of recent efforts to sustainably increase bison populations and reintroduce them to the American Midwest. In the late 1900s, organizations such as the National Bison Association and the Canadian Bison Association worked with individuals to promote raising bison in every state and nearly every province, especially those with plains (D. E. Popper and F. J. Popper, 2006). Wealthy entrepreneurs and conservations have even gone so far as to promote the recovery of large regions of the plains as a bison ecosystem, a movement known as Buffalo Commons. This movement has “coincided with numbers of important shifts: from a paradigm of mastery of nature to one of cooperation based on ecology… As one result… prairie dogs were saved from extermination in Lubbock, Texas, because of their identified role in the ecosystem” (D. E. Popper and F. J. Popper, 2006). These efforts are part of a global movement to “rewild” anthropogenic landscapes, breed endangered or even extinct animals.  Today, bison have reemerged as an economically significant source of food. A Nebraskan farmer, Dave Hutchinson, was recognized in September 2017 in the Omaha World Herald for promoting organic bison, "raised and finished on grass" (S. B. Hansen, 2017). His land “has been certified organic since 1980 and his animals since 1990” (S. B. Hansen, 2017). This is particularly notable for Nebraska because according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2012 Census of Agriculture, there's "about 23,000 bison in Nebraska and 88 operations raising the animals, making Nebraska the second highest producer, behind South Dakota" (S. B. Hansen, 2017). Certainly, the attitude towards bison is shifting towards an approach that encourages natural bison growth, in Nebraska, nationally, and internationally. Hutchinson’s farm attracts local, domestic, and foreign visitors that are intrigued by his dedication to organic farming and conservation. Hutchinson demonstrates how humans can positively employ their power to help conserve nature.  Nebraskans continue to be a leading force in bison conservation. Across the U.S., the bison is now considered the national mammal (World-Herald Editorial, 2016). Nebraskans recognize the bison’s impact on Great Plains ecology and Native American culture. U.S. Representative Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, a sponsor of the National Bison Legacy Act, says, “bison have a storied history in Nebraska and are an important part of our nation’s frontier heritage… By naming bison as our national mammal, we are supporting the ongoing preservation of this majestic species and their essential tie to the American experience” (World-Herald Editorial, 2016). This admiration for the North American bison inspires a spirit of activism towards the bison that once roamed the Great Plains.  Bison will never reassume the prominence they once held in Midwest ecologies and human societies. From that perspective, a twenty first century bison like Scout serves as a culturally resonant reminder of past mistakes. The massive decline in the bison population demonstrates our selfish, greedy nature that drives us to push nature and its creatures to its limits. However, the bison recovery represents a different perspective on the Anthropocene. It shows that with conscious effort, humans also have the capability to create new relationships with nature. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chelsey Dizon Kevin Vincent Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived “Basic Facts About Bison.” Defender.org. https://defenders.org/bison/basic-facts (26 November 2017). Danz, Harold P. Of Bison and Man: From the Annals of a Bison Yesterday to a Refreshing Outcome from Human Involvement with America's Most Valiant of Beasts. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997. Derr, James N., Philip W. Hedrick, Natalie D. Halbert, Louis Plough, Lauren K. Dobson, Julie King, Calvin Duncan, David L. Hunter, Noah D. Cohen, and Dennis Hedgecock. "Phenotypic Effects of Cattle Mitochondrial DNA in American Bison." Conservation Biology 26, no. 6 (2012): 1130-136. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2012.01905.x. Flannery, Tim F. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples. London: Penguin, 2001. Geist, Valerius. Buffalo nation: history and legend of the North American bison. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1996. Hansen, Sarah Baker. "Nebraska Man Raises Organic Bison." Omaha World-Herald, September 17, 2017. Accessed November 7, 2017. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/nebraska/articles/2017-09-17/nebraska-man-raises-organic-bison. Harris, H. R. ""John Full of Pep," Only Surviving Paleface to Hunt Buffaloes with Pawnees, Recalls Days when Hoof Beats Resembled Thunder on Plains." The Omaha Sunday Bee, August 29, 1920. Accessed December 10, 2017. Hedrick, Philip W. “Conservation Genetics and North American Bison.” Journal of Heredity 100, no. 4 (July 2009): 411-420. doi:10.1093/jhered/esp024 Isenberg. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Studies in Environment and History). Cambridge University Press, 2000. Knapp, A., J. Blair, J. Briggs, S. Collins, D. Hartnett, L. Johnson, and E. Towne. "The Keystone Role of Bison in North American Tallgrass Prairie: Bison Increase Habitat Heterogeneity and Alter a Broad Array of Plant, Community, and Ecosystem Processes."BioScience, 1999. doi:10.1525/bisi.1999.49.1.39. Lott, Dale F. American Bison: a Natural History. University of California Press, 2003. McHugh, Tom. The Time of the Buffalo. New Jersey: Castle Books, 2004. Popper, Deborah E., and Frank J. Popper. "The onset of the Buffalo Commons." Journal of the West 45, no. 2 (2006): 29. Ray, Arthur J. Indians in the Fur Trade: their roles as trappers, hunters, and middlemen in the lands southwest of hudson bay, 1660-1870. Toronto: Univ of Toronto Press, 2017. Smits, David D. "The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883." The Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (1994): 312. doi:10.2307/971110. Sweitzer, RICK A., Juanita M. Constible, Dirk H. Van Vuren, PETER T. Schuyler, and FRANK R. Starkey. "History, habitat use and management of bison on Catalina Island, California." In 6th California Islands Symposium, Institute for Wildlife Studies, Ventura, CA. 2005. Taylor, M. Scott. "Buffalo Hunt: International Trade and the Virtual Extinction of the North American Bison." American Economic Review 101, no. 7 (2011): 3162-195. doi:10.1257/aer.101.7.3162. "World-Herald editorial: Bison are a fitting symbol for Plains, U.S." Omaha.com. May 18, 2016. Accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.omaha.com/opinion/world-herald-editorial-bison-are-a-fitting-symbol-for-plains/article_c6f22d14-e8a6-5f3a-9c30-b043011909b3.html. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Durham Museum Collection Bison Great Plains Ecology Overkill Prairie Ecosystem Rewilding Second Industrial Revolution Westward Expansion https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/93c1469fdd84dd253f9ecdd5d642f912.jpg f264ba94a03e9c3f1130b423e0bdbd2c https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/b4cb9117eb7015b460d9697f0810b841.jpg 24265a1902b37caeb3460427bc647c6c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 3 Description An account of the resource Picture of the Omaha's Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Company from 1911. This building was used for to produce plows and other farm equipment until 1964. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Photo Courtesy of the Durham Museum Archive Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Commercial use or distribution of the image is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Please contact The Durham Museum for permission to use the digital image. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://durhammuseum.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15426coll1/id/22206/rec/36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Subject The topic of the resource Humans spent thousands of years hunting and gathering before the development of agriculture. Scientists call this change the “Neolithic Revolution.” Many argue this was the start of the Anthropocene. Plows and hoes have been a part of this story for over 4000 years. The “single wheel hoe” on display was handmade and likely built during the twentieth century. It overturns soil, buries weeds, and mixes nutrients. Nebraska’s agriculture grew as it industrialized in the nineteenth century. Farmers looked to companies in Omaha to supply necessary tools. Agriculture became the state’s basic source of wealth, and Omaha grew alongside it. As industrial agriculture grew globally in the 20th century, environmental consequences came with it, such as during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s or the USSR in the 1940s. The single wheel hoe predates this global shift towards agriculture. This hoe reminds us that agriculture takes many forms. Description An account of the resource Reliable food sources have been a major aspect of human life since the dawn of our existence. Humans spent thousands of years hunting and gathering until a new way of life emerged; the settled lifestyle of the agriculturalist. As agriculture became a widespread practice and the populations grew, human societies needed to find new ways to cultivate the land faster and more efficiently. Plows became increasingly popular as one of the main tools used to aid in the expansion of farming. Many farmers used plows to overturn the soil leaving the fertile earth on top, bury weeds, and mix soil. Small, hand held plows developed into to horse and oxen-drawn plows, which, by the nineteenth century progressed to larger industrial plows. Plowing has left an indelible impression on global landscapes and the Nebraskan environment. In the nineteenth century, “sod-busting” became synonymous with the idealized, American frontier ethic. It represented the pioneering spirit, the “progress” of westward expansion, and improvement and mastery of nature. More recent historians have viewed sod-busting with a more critical gaze. Geoff Cunfer has gone so far as to call plowing “ecocide” due to the disastrous effects humans and the implements we use have had on the ecosystem. (Cunfer, 2005) Our object reminds us that agriculture need not be synonymous with environmental “destruction.” The plow did not inevitably “break the plains.” However, many farmers throughout the nineteenth century and still today use a variety of agricultural implements, many of which confute these characterizations. Smaller, handheld plows, for instance, used in “backyard” farms promote healthier agricultural practices. These rudimentary plows are some of the least environmentally invasive yet beneficial instruments used in farming history. The plow is an important artifact in Omaha’s environmental history due to its contribution to the agricultural foundation on which Omaha and the greater Nebraska area was built. It links Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene through the worldwide shift towards farming which has changed many aspects of the world we live in. The story of the plow begins after the Neolithic revolution. Early plow prototypes first appeared nearly 4,000 years ago in Sumar and Egypt in a dry environment that required moisture in the soil. (Pryor, 1985) These plows had rudimentary structures that would be barely recognizable if compared to the plows of present day. Many advancements took place over the years including the addition of wheels and improved handles to make maneuvering the plow through the fields easier. By the nineteenth century, farmers relied on local blacksmiths to produce the necessary farm tools. (Bonney, 1981) The plows produced during this time were made with metal bolts and bars, which attached the wood handles to the cultivators and wheels. In order to make a better furrow, blacksmiths incorporated cast iron parts into the plow design during the late 19th century to decrease the amount of soil that stuck to the plow. Prior to this development, plowing with an animal such as oxen required three farmers. The first to drive the plow, another to steer, and the last to clean the dirt off the blade. John Deere provided an even greater advancement of the plow through his creation of a steel plow. With Deere’s new steel design, the soil did not stick to the hoe and it pulled with less resistance. This decreased the amount of time, labor, and number of farmers needed to plow. Even with sharper pieces on the plows to cut through the soil easier, “a farmer walking behind a plow could only plow two acres a day.” (Bonney, 1981) By the end of the 19th century, machines pulled by horses were used instead of the human driven implements and farmers could plow up to seven acres a day. In 1903 there were different types of single wheel hoes and attachments available. These advertisements were used to display the prices varying from $3.75 to $11.00. With low prices like these, hoes were not limited to mass-production farmers, they could be used in the backyard. By 1911, the single wheeled hoe with one plows, multiple wheels, two hoes, three cultivator teeth, and rakes attached was selling for as little as $5.35 (Iron Age Farm and Garden Tools of 1903) (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/57" title="Figure 1" target="_self">Figure 1</a>). The single wheeled hoe is a type of plow, but one with a fundamentally different purpose. Rather than producing food to be sold in quantity, it would have been used for gardening. Plains farmers, even those with significant acreage planted in single crops, often cultivated large kitchen gardens. Farmers growing vegetables typically use wheel cultivators to aid in their gardening (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/56" title="Figure 2" target="_self">Figure 2</a>). These smaller plows are used to “loosen the soil, allow moisture to reach the roots of crops and to keep down the weeds." (Moulton, 1997) A single wheeled hoe is useful because farmers are able to plant seeds in more narrow rows compared to the rows created by using a double wheeled plow or a plow pulled by a horse. This allows more crops to be produced in a smaller space thereby increasing productivity. The tire used in this plow resembles that of a bicycle tire contributing to our argument that this was a homemade implement. The wooden arms of the plow appear to be screwed to the cultivator teeth. This single-wheeled hoe is made of a bike tire, two wooden handles, and steel cultivator teeth. The object is useful for both amateur and professional gardeners. Recreational gardeners use it to save time and decrease effort. Professional gardeners use this object because it is more precise. It is also sturdier and can be effective though “many sessions… The hoes are used for weeding, mulching, and shallow cultivation… The cultivator teeth or ‘duckfeet’ are for general cultivation. They have a narrow neck with a wide head for turning over the weeds. The plow is rugged enough to do real plowing or furrowing.” (History of the Wheel Hoe) This object is in The Durham Museum's collection because of the many agricultural supplies produced in Omaha as well as the numerous farms in the surrounding area. One place of this production in Omaha was the Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Co. This building of this wholesale company was located at 707 S 11th Street in Omaha and was built in 1906 (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/55" title="Figure 3" target="_self">Figure 3</a>). The railroad and nearby river were used to distribute the agricultural tools from this building. In 1903 the main interests in South Omaha included livestock and packing. At that time, Omaha “[had] some good agricultural lands outlying." (Wills, 1995) While it is believed that this object was handmade, it may have been inspired by products made in this building. In the territorial period, farming was limited in Nebraska. Farms were only about fifty acres, and the “tools and implements” were crude and simple. Markets for agricultural products were few, and capital for investment was in short supply. But after Nebraska was linked by rail to the East by 1869, farming was transformed into the state’s basic producer of wealth - the foundation of its economy.” (Traveler's Railway Guide, 1903) Plows became more common by the 1870s. “Nebraska farmers could buy a variety of new and improved plows… [and] cultivators." (Luebke, 2005) The plows used during this time allowed farmers to produce large quantities of crops that stimulated economic growth and the personal wealth of these farmers. Due to this economic impact, the cities of Nebraska were able to develop homes and businesses that lead to the establishment of cities like Omaha”. This single wheeled hoe was used in both amateur and professional gardener: recreationally or occupationally. The Anthropocene highlights a history of human impact on the environment that is commonly seen in a negative light. Plows can easily be added to the list of man-made implements that produce disastrous environmental changes and threaten the future of the earth. Major events such as the Dust Bowl have been attributed to the overuse of plows and show the disastrous effects the plow can have on the environment. (Plow that Broke the Plains, 1936) Areas of land that are continuously plowed can quickly become useless for farming due to soil erosion and nutrient depletion from the earth that continues long after the land is abandoned. (Ciampalini et al, 2012) As the soil erodes it is carried away by water runoff or wind and becomes pollution in the air and water. Some soil and nutrients end up in nearby ponds or lakes making them dirty and reducing photosynthesis. (Lal, Reicosky, and Hanson, 2007) The pH of the soil is also affected by long-term plowing as well as the hydration of the soil which affects the soil’s ability to sustain crops over time. (Hester and Marrison, 2012; Percy, 1992) In addition to these more tangible effects, other consequences of plowing affect the earth’s atmosphere (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/58" title="Figure 4" target="_self">Figure 4</a>). Carbon dioxide and nitrogen emissions play a major role in the environmental change. As these harmful substances are released from the soil, they go into the atmosphere where they contribute to holes in the ozone and global warming. As shown in the following chart, plowing and other farming practices have had a major impact on environmental change. (Gilbert, 2011) However, single wheeled plows such as this one must be viewed from a different perspective. These smaller plows are used to participate in small scale, oftentimes organic farming that produces far fewer emissions and soil disruption than the large-scale plows. (Wu and Xie, 2011) They oftentimes do not use pesticides which helps decrease the runoff of toxins into the surrounding water and air. Smaller farms also commonly practice crop rotation which fosters healthier soil that does not require nearly as many fertilizers to grow healthy crops. The use of smaller plows such as this single wheeled hoe helps increase carbon storage and decreases nutrient depletion. (Bengtsson, Ahnstrohm, and Weibull, 2005) While the scale of these positive environmental impacts of farming with a single wheeled hoe are varied based on location and climate of the region, it is clear that this local farming avoids many of the harmful impacts of commercial farming. Additionally, urban farming does not require the removal of natural environments such as forests that oftentimes accompanies larger rural farming. This object is connected to the Anthropocene by the themes of agriculture, industrialization, and the growth of industry. The plow is deeply rooted in the history of agriculture, as it has remained a major contributor to the success of farming. The plow has been used in many cultures across the world for thousands of years. Preceded by the use of a digging stick, plows have changed the scale on which humans interact with the land. The plow’s association with agriculture assisted in creating an environmental impact that included the selection of species, indirect influences, ecosystem change, population pressure, climate change, and farming pressure. The environmental impact of the plow accelerated during the nineteenth century as a result of industrialization and the expansion of resource frontiers . via railroads, linking increasingly distant farmlands to growing cities. The farming implements themselves were also transported on these rail networks after the Industrial Revolution. As time went on, according to historian Michael Kopsidis, “demand from cities generated incentives for an intensification of agriculture. In this view, the urban dwellers that specialized in commerce, crafts, proto-industry, trade, and later on industry, were important and concentrated sources of demand for the output of farms.” (Kopsidis and Wolf, 2012) Companies were created for the sole purpose of selling this groundbreaking equipment to farmers. One of the most famous farm equipment companies, the John Deere Corporation, was founded due to their creation of a self-scouring steel plow. In addition to their popularity in the retail market, the plow’s capacity to strip soil of its nutrients has resulted in the need to quickly replace the lost nutrients of the soil. (Gregg, 2015) The plow has played a significant role in the history of agriculture as well as the emergence of the Anthropocene. Through its utility the plow has become one of the most influential instruments used in the farming community today. From the time people first began using plows, their usage had progressively increased. Farmers now rely heavily on plows to efficiently increase their crop production by burying weeds and previously planted crops and increased soil fertility. While historically most plows looked similar to this one, the farming equipment industry has exploded and today most plows are massive machines pulled by tractors used to cultivate hundreds of acres of farmland. The advancement of plows, although more efficient, have unfavorable impacts on the environment. However, plows similar to this single wheeled hoe have had a more positive effect on the environment through their promotion of organic farming methods that reduce the amount of toxins released into their environments. Our single wheeled hoe, thus, reflects a more hopeful view of the Anthropocene. Lately the focus has shifted to finding ways to use the plow responsibly to reduce its negative impacts. Recognizing the capacity of the land and shifting to the use of smaller plows such as this one could help reduce the emissions produced by large-scale farming. Farmers could also plant trees and shrubs surrounding their farms to reduce the wind erosion that is supported by the plowing 18 . These steps must be taken to reduce the impacts of the plow on the earth that can be seen through the Anthropocene. The plow has played a major role in the environmental history of Omaha through its contribution to the agriculture both within Omaha and the surrounding area. The effects of the plow must be considered with looking at the global history of the Anthropocene as it directly relates to the widespread shift towards farming which has greatly influenced our world. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Abigail Klick Michaela Peck Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bengtsson, Janne, Johan Ahnström, and Ann-Christin Weibull. "The effects of organic agriculture on biodiversity and abundance: a meta-analysis." Journal of Applied Ecology 42, no. 2 (2005): 261-69. Bonney, Margaret Atherton ed., “Plowing in the Past: A Look at Early Farm Machinery,” The Goldfinch 2, no. 3 (February 1981): 8-11.Cunfer, Geoff. On The Great Plains. TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. Ciampalini, Rossano, Paolo Billi, Giovanni Ferrari, Lorenzo Borsellini, and Stephane Follain. "Soil erosion induced by land use changes as determined by plough marks and field evidence in the Aksum area (Ethiopia)." Agriculture, Ecosystems, & Environment 146 (1) (2012): 197-208. Gilbert, Natasha. "Summit Urged to Clean Up Farming." Nature 479, no. 7373 (2011): 279. Gregg, Sara M. "From Breadbasket to Dust Bowl: Rural Credit, the World War I Plow-Up, and the Transformation of American Agriculture." Great Plains Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 129-66. Hester, R. E., and Roy M. Harrison. Environmental impacts of modern agriculture. Cambridge: RSC Publishing, 2012. "History of the Wheel Hoe." Hoss Tools. https://hosstools.com/history-of-the-wheel-hoe/. "Iron Age Farm and Garden Tools of 1903." Farm and Garden Tools of 1903, 1903, 108. Kopsidis, Michael, and Nikolaus Wolf. “Agricultural Productivity Across Prussia During the Industrial Revolution: A Thünen Perspective.” The Journal of Economic History 72, no. 3 (2012): 634–70. Lal, R., D. C. Reicosky, and J. D. Hanson. "Evolution of the plow over 10,000 years and the rationale for no-till farming." Soil and Tillage Research 93, no. 1 (March 2007): 1-12. Luebke, Frederick C. Nebraska: an illustrated history. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Moulton, Candy Vyvey. Roadside history of Nebraska. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Pub. Co., 1997. Percy, David O. "Ax or Plow?: Significant Colonial Landscape Alteration Rates in the Maryland and Virginia Tidewater." Agricultural History 66, no. 2 (1992): 66-74. Prelinger Archives: The Plow That Broke the Plains (Part I) (1936). 1936. Accessed October 10, 2017. Pryor, Frederic L. "The Invention of the Plow." Comparative Studies in Society and History 27, no. 4 (1985): 727-43. "The Garden Magazine." Grow Your Own Vegetables : 72. Travelers' Railway Guide, Western Section (formerly the Rand-McNally Railway Guide). American Railway Guide Company, 1903. Wills, Charles A. Historical Album of Nebraska. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1995. "Parlin Orendorff and Martin Plow Co. Building." Omaha LHPC. Accessed October 03, 2017. Wu, Xingkuan, and Hao Xie. 2011. Green Building Technologies and Materials : Selected, Peer Reviewed Papers From the 2011 International Conference on Green Building Technologies and Materials (GBTM 2011), May 30, 2011, Brussels, Belgium. Durtne-Zurich, Switzerland: Trans Tech Publications, 2011. (accessed October 10, 2017). Title A name given to the resource Single-Wheel Hoe Agriculture Commodity Frontier Dust Bowl Erosion Greenhouse Gasses Industrialization Westward Expansion https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/bb0c7469df2650d90a32598e76921f82.JPG ee096f975bcdaf7221277308634efa72 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1: Lithic Tools Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/82bb5e80b5d9a4baff82531b61d72a1d.JPG dd654f3de94759e9b54a8926dd3911cd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2: Lithic Tools Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collections Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lithic Tools Subject The topic of the resource Stone tools are among the most important evidence of early changes humans made to the earth system. Early humans (8000 BC – 1000 BC) used stone tools, like this mortar and scraper, to process food, hides, and other materials. These tools embody the “Neolithic Revolution,” which was the global shift in human culture from hunting and gathering to farming. Farming required humans to become more sedentary. This led to longer and more sustained interactions with the environment. The environmental (and social) impacts of this were profound. Early humans used tools like these to process and use natural resources in new ways. Their perception of the environment transitioned to one of consumption and extraction. This is due to larger settlements and more intensive interactions with the environment. Instead of living with the environment, they lived on it. Description An account of the resource Agriculture is a fundamental aspect of modern society. 90 million acres are dedicated to corn alone, the most productive mono crop (calories/acre), which accounts for one of the largest uses of land in the United States. (Capehart, 2017) No matter if you are the farmer in the tractor plowing the fields, or the consumer buying produce in the grocery store, agriculture pervades your life. Modern agriculture provides the caloric needs in order for humans to undergo their lives unburdened by these basic primal needs. Thousands of years ago, agriculture did not exist and providing suitable food resource for these basic needs was a fight for survival. Stone tools aided humans in obtaining these crucial resources. Stone tools are a technology that has changed human’s relationship with the environment. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/79" title="Lithic1">Figure 1</a>) They allow humans to manipulate and process resources that would otherwise be less useful. The Durham Museum’s lithic tools are a window into transition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the more sedentary lifestyle of a farmer. The use of these tools aided in the reshaping of human lives and their environments. Relating these tools to the anthropocene provides some contextual evidence as to how these tools, and more importantly, the role that agriculture played in the transition to a new epoch. Sustained interactions of the earth through agriculture have fundamentally impacted human relationships with the environment, which poses anthropogenic impacts through developing technology, changes in societal and cultural structure and subsequent ties to Omaha. The context of these particular stone tools has been lost in time. This is unfortunately the case with many similar artifacts in museums around the world. Once removed from the ground, archaeological evidence loses its context, and by consequence much of its history. The possibilities are practically endless for the history of these stone tools. The only provenance known regarding these tools is The Durham Museum acquired them from the Joslyn Museum in 1965. Even without this context what we can understand is the purpose and story surrounding these stone tools, which in turn, links us, and links Omaha, to profound change in the earth system. The availability of ground stone and the ease of manipulation of these rocks into tools make ground stone tool some of the most ubiquitous artifacts in human history. Almost every civilization or group of humans used ground stone tools at one point in time. Although sources of ground stone were static, early humans were nomadic and would often disperse these tools across the landscape. For example, the Western Comanche tribe traded extensively with the French in the 1700’s. Native American trade centers were the norm during these times and were critical in the exchange of technology. (Hämäläinen, 1998) These more modern trading systems are indicative of the trade systems of the past. In context of chipped stone tools, rigorous analysis of particular stone a tool is made of, one can predict the site in which it came from. One can then track the dispersion of stone tools across landscapes from the Folsom, Davis, Cody, and Clovis sites. (Irwin and Wromington, 1970) Paleo-Indians created these tools anywhere where ground stone is/was abundant. If these tools were discovered in the Midwest, the approximate source of stone used to construct these tool would have been the Rocky Mountains. Similar tools have been unearthed by archaeologists and their classification offer insights into their use and environmental implications. The tool which resembles a bowl is called a mortar, which would have been used to process and store plants and other food materials by crushing them with another rock called a pestle. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/80" title="Lithic2">Figure 2</a>) People also used these tools to process and store paints and dyes. The other tool could have been used as a scraper in which the edge would have been used to soften hides or to clean meat off of animal hides while seemingly primitive, these basic tools remain in widespread use today. The modern mortar and pestle, for instance, is often used in the kitchen to process certain food items. The first lesson these tools offer is that the history of technology (which cannot be divorced from narratives of the Anthropocene) is as much the history of modification as it is radical innovation. Stone tools transcend the divide between ancient humans nomadic subsistence strategies and later agricultural sedentism. Paleo-Indians brought stone tools with them when they settled North America. “To colonize the Americas, modern humans had to learn to subsist in the extreme environments of the Siberian Arctic.” (Goebel, Waters, and O'Rourke, 2008) These modern humans were the first to colonize the Americas by crossing the ice bridge of Beringia approximately 15,000 years ago. According to Barton et al, these Paleo-Indians were characterized as mobile hunter-gatherers that used high-quality stones, like chert and obsidian, which were highly curated and had multiple functions. (Barton, 2004) The main purpose of these tools was to aid in the hunting and processing of animals, such as the woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, or the mastodon, in order to obtain better utility of these resources. Paleo-Indian cultures, for instance, are even named after the locations where these stone tools were first discovered, the most famous being Clovis and Folsom. Although the popular Clovis and Folsom assemblages are not notable in the Nebraskan soil layers, two nearby dig sites have led to evidence of Paleo-Indian activities. According to Holen and May, the La Sena and Shaffert mammoth sites, both located in Frontier County, Nebraska, have fossil evidence of mammoth bones that were processed by humans by breaking them open in order to obtain the bone marrow of the mammoth. (Holen and May, 2002) The descendants of the early Paleo-Indians, Native Americans, continued to use this stone tool technology to obtain and process food for thousands of years to come. In fact, the keystone species of the Great Plains, the bison, is attributed as a key to survival of the Paleo-Indians of the plains as early as 11,000 years ago, and often associated to the mainstay of the more modern Native Americans in Nebraska and the Great Plains. (Hofman and Graham, 1998) “The Lakota and Cheyenne, for instance, are described as relying heavily on bison meat for food and living a nomadic lifestyle in tune with the movements of the Bison. More sedentary farming societies, such as the Mandan, Hidatsa, Pawnee, Oto, and Kansa, incorporated seasonal long-distance bison hunts into their annual subsistence." (Ritterbusch, 2002) Stone tools were crucial in aiding early Native Americans in utilizing large mammals, such as the bison, as a vital resource. They used the stone technology, like the scrapper, to make the resources already available to them, more fruitful. Respectively, lithic tools are an important piece of technology used by the Paleo-Indians and later used by more local Native American tribes in the Great Plains that was key to the survival of these peoples. Hunter-gatherer cultures used lithic technology to hunt more efficiently and process the animals they were using as a food source. However, not all lithic technology was used in the hunting and processing of animals, and in fact, lithic technology is often associated with sedentism and the rise of agriculture. Early humans were nomadic due to the nature of their food source. They would follow their food in the form of herds of mastodons, woolly mammoths, and even bison across the land. The stone tools they used were often cumbersome and difficult to travel with. In order to move more effectively with their food, they would leave the stone tools at their campsite with the assumption they would create new tools wherever they would live next, or come back to them when the herd moves back to the original campsites. This is why there are large deposits of stone tools left in the earth and not an even distribution of them. (Price and Bar-Yosef, 2011) It was not until domestication of crops, the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 BC, which more sedentary lifestyles became common. Agriculture, incentivized communities to settle in order to tend their fields, this allowed people to keep their stone tools and use them for a longer time and create larger stone tools once too cumbersome and hard to transport. These stone tools aided in the cultivation of crops and processing of the subsequent products, such as the mortar. According to Weisdorf, “The rise of Neolithic agriculture is unquestionably one of the most important events in human cultural history." (Weisdrof, 2005) It is often assumed that farming was much easier and the preferred method of obtaining food for the early humans. In reality, it was labor-intensive and backbreaking work for the same amount of calories compared to hunting. Historical ecologist Jack R. Harlan poses the question the best: “Why farm?”8 There are many proposed answers for this question. Economic historians North and Thomas believe it is as simple as a comparative static model that explicitly considers the influence of property rights and population growth upon a man’s behavior. Smith argues it was a decision born of necessity due to the large-scale extinction of certain mega fauna species approximately 10,000 years ago (itself possible the result of excessive hunting). (Smith, 1975) Many more theories try to illustrate the exact causation of the transition to agriculture. (Weisdrof, 2003; Trigger, 1989; North and Thomas, 1977) Whatever the motivations for its development, agriculture has become a defining component of our society today through the feature of innate sedentism and excess of calories that it provides. Farming has been the most direct and uninterrupted interaction between human beings and their environment. The innate goal of farming is to divert and alter natural resources in order to fulfill human goals of creating a sustainable food source. “Farming is a way of obtaining food that involves the cultivation of plants and the controlled herding of animals." (Harlan, 1992) The new systems of obtaining food were much more than cultivation, herding, or the ensuing domestication of various species. The differences in lifestyles, hunter-gatherer vs. farming, necessitated changes to societal structures. The fundamental difference between the hunter-gatherer and the farmer is the way in which calories are obtained. The hunter-gatherer must be nomadic, whereas the farmer remains sedentary. Cultural and societal structures reflect the differences in these lifestyles. Agriculturalists intensively modified the land around them in order to create a milieu that suits their needs. The basic goal of a farmer is to alter the plant community in order to favor the preference of a few plant species that produce food. This produced, in the best of circumstances, fantastic amounts of energy in the form of food, but it likewise necessitated new relationships with their surroundings, transforming the environment. In the face of these developments and resulting population increases of sedentary societies, nomadic lifestyles slowly waned and a rise of sedentary lifestyle ushered in a new culture. Hunting and gathering has been the way to make a living for hundreds of thousands of years. It was not until recently, geologically speaking, agriculture has taken its roots, and an exponential amount of changes have accompanied it. The sheer amount of changes the past thousands of years necessitates the idea there is a fundamental difference in these two points in time, and this idea is prevalent in early Anthropocene hypothesis thinkers. Early anthropogenic traits have been observed with the presence of cultivated plant remains in archaeological collection sites, in which researchers first noted these changes in radiocarbon-dated soil deposits. Interglacial core samples provide evidence of the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels as anomalous in comparison to previous trends. During the Industrial Revolution, 150 years ago, a large spike in these levels is observable. Recent collection of interglacial core samples provide insight that the start of the rising spike in greenhouse gases spanning from 7000-2000 years ago. Rise in carbon dioxide and methane levels display trends that had risen one standard deviation point above previously recorded levels in interglacial core samples. This upward trend strongly suggest that the rising greenhouse gas levels were not naturally, but in fact were the result of developed agricultural fields and livestock accumulation which poses anthropogenic traits. (Ruddiman, 2013) Certini and Scalenghe argue the start of the Anthropocene is, “...the period when human activity acts as a major driving factor in modifying the landscape and the environment." (Certini and Scalenghe, 2011) It is undeniable the Industrial Revolution is a possible golden spike for this new geological epoch, however, there was a large change in the earth system preceding this revolution and therefore the golden spike should be placed prior. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/show/81" title="Dates">Figure 3</a>) The development and advancement of agriculture promoted the manipulation of the environment and a shift in human diets. That transition is reflected in our stone tools, whether represented by the stone scraper and its connections to the exploitation of mega fauna, or our mortar and pestle, crushing cultivated grains. As human lives became more complex, the impact on the Earth grew even further. The study of environmental history furthers uncovers the impact of agriculture in relation to the anthropocene. “Environmental history examines the evolving relationship between people and nature - it is rooted in place. From this perspective humans exist within nature, not apart from it, and like all animal species, our survival depends upon the health of the habitat in which we live. We both shape and are shaped by the world around us." (Dant, 2016) This has rapidly changed as societies formed and evolved. Similar tools are transformative as their complexity was shaped to suit human needs. The complexity of technology and the shifting of lifestyles exhibit anthropogenic traits as the composition of the earth as the evolving human cultures become more complex and the manipulation of the earth intensifies. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adam Luton Will Norskov Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Capehart, Thomas. “Background”. United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx (accessed December 12, 2017) Hämäläinen, Pekka. "The western Comanche trade center: Rethinking the plains Indian trade system." Western Historical Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1998): 485-513. Irwin, Henry T., and H. Marie Wormington. "Paleo-Indian tool types in the Great Plains." American Antiquity 35, no. 1 (1970): 24-34. Goebel, Ted, Michael R. Waters, and Dennis H. O'rourke. "The late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans in the Americas." science 319, no. 5869 (2008): 1497-1502. Barton, C. Michael, ed. The settlement of the American continents: a multidisciplinary approach to human biogeography. University of Arizona Press, 2004. Holen, Steven R., and David W. May. "The La Sena and Shaffert Mammoth Sites." In Medicine Creek: Seventy years of archaeological investigations, pp. 20-36. University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, 2002. Hofman, Jack L., and Russell W. Graham. "The Paleo-indian cultures of the Great Plains." Archaeology on the Great Plains(1998): 87-139. Ritterbush, Lauren W. "Drawn by the Bison: Late Prehistoric Native Migration into the Central Plains." Price, T. Douglas, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. "The origins of agriculture: new data, new ideas: an introduction to supplement 4." Current Anthropology 52, no. S4 (2011): S163-S174. Weisdorf, Jacob L. "From foraging to farming: explaining the Neolithic Revolution." Journal of Economic surveys 19, no. 4 (2005): 561-586. Smith, Vernon L. "The primitive hunter culture, Pleistocene extinction, and the rise of agriculture."Journal of Political Economy 83, no. 4 (1975): 727-755. Weisdorf, Jacob L. Stone age economics: The origins of agriculture and the emergence of non-food specialists. No. 03-34. 2003. Trigger, Bruce G. A history of archaeological thought. Cambridge University Press, 1989. North, Douglass C., and Robert Paul Thomas. "The first economic revolution." The Economic History Review 30, no. 2 (1977): 229-241. Harlan, Jack Rodney. Crops and man. No. Ed. 2. American Society of Agronomy, 1992. Ruddiman, William F. “The Anthropocene.” The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science 45, (2013): 45-68. Certini, Giacomo, and Riccardo Scalenghe. "Anthropogenic soils are the golden spikes for the Anthropocene." The Holocene 21, no. 8 (2011): 1269-1274. Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Agriculture Greenhouse Gasses Hunter-Gatherer Lithic Tools Neolithic Revolution https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/15e6eaaf65eea4df90409ae9e6241696.jpg 3f4fe8024f05c33882d8ebd47d4e2450 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yoke Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/86819fc21f6a501eca0664ac453899f5.jpg 2e551f1ddc8cdd9db431e7fca1453920 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photograph of the Yoke on display, and its parts labeled: Description An account of the resource Beam: the main body of the yoke, the beam that rests across the neck of the ox. Neck seat: The part that rests directly on the neck of the animal Belly: The lowest point of the yoke, between the two oxen. This is also where the staple and hitch rings hang, and where implements are hooked up. Bow(s): The curved pieces that go around the ox’s neck. The bows rest on the shoulder and provide the ox with something to push against when drawing a load. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Durham Museum Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/9373f7990463561b7fef385eff50afb3.jpg a40ba585d3020e0837eaa2e18afffbb2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1880 Cultivated Land Description An account of the resource change in the plains over the course over 60 years. The darker a county is, the higher the percentage of cultivated land. 1900 is significantly more cultivated than the 1940 map due to over cultivation and plowing that was corrected in the mid-1920s and 30s. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jen Luttrell Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived IPUMS NHGIS. Accessed March 22, 2018. https://www.nhgis.org/ https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/1beef818a804ab2985f792dd52cdd748.jpg 20f8d27b0fc2f4f4008dfb0ebe58356b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1900 Cultivated Land Description An account of the resource Change in the plains over the course over 60 years. The darker a county is, the higher the percentage of cultivated land. 1900 is significantly more cultivated than the 1940 map due to over cultivation and plowing that was corrected in the mid-1920s and 30s. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jen Luttrell Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived IPUMS NHGIS. Accessed March 22, 2018. https://www.nhgis.org/ https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/91e3abbc7902424c630b7b7df4ea51aa.jpg 37fb576375890203bfacbd0228959198 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1920 Cultivated Land Description An account of the resource Change in the plains over the course over 60 years. The darker a county is, the higher the percentage of cultivated land. 1900 is significantly more cultivated than the 1940 map due to over cultivation and plowing that was corrected in the mid-1920s and 30s. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jen Luttrell Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived IPUMS NHGIS. Accessed March 22, 2018. https://www.nhgis.org/. https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/675ea182d9c81d3165b11e535235afa5.jpg bdb18bb5501e0da58b50ce58617fd21e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1940 Cultivated Land Description An account of the resource Change in the plains over the course over 60 years. The darker a county is, the higher the percentage of cultivated land. 1900 is significantly more cultivated than the 1940 map due to over cultivation and plowing that was corrected in the mid-1920s and 30s. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jen Luttrell Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived IPUMS NHGIS. Accessed March 22, 2018. https://www.nhgis.org/. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yoke Subject The topic of the resource The Great Plains region was unusable for Euro-American farmers without plows and yokes. Yoked oxen pulled steel plows across the prairie, breaking through the tough sod. Yokes like this, usually made out of hardwood, harness the power of oxen. Between the years of 1880-1940 there was a drastic increase of up to 70% in plowed land through the region. Plowed soil was more likely to lose nutrients and become eroded than prairie soil. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the soil turned to black clouds in the wind, furthering erosion. Farming practices have evolved, but grasslands remain under pressure globally. This is one component of the discussion of a new possible era called the Anthropocene. Description An account of the resource “In the 1870s the “boomers” were joined by others with excellent reputations as scientists who proclaimed that plowing up the plains had the effect of increasing rainfall - that rain follows the plow.” (Luebke, 2005) This was the mindset that lead to the settling and plowing of the Great Plains. Over several decades, the region was drastically changed through sodbusting and the long-term effects involved. In this region there was a period of major expansion followed by a period of reduction once farmers realized their error. (Cunfer, 2005) These regional changes are one of many as a result of humans occurring in different places globally. A new era for the planet caused by these human interactions, the Anthropocene, might be at hand do to these global environmental changes. The ox yoke is a tool from ancient times. It is thought they were first used in southern Europe and western Asia. However, it is difficult to determine when and where since the wood they are made of decomposes. But remains of ox horns found in 2900-2600 BCE show indentions thought to be from being tied to a yoke. (Milisauaskas, Sarunus, and Kruk, 1991) A yoke is a wooden bar or frame by which oxen are joined at the heads or necks for accomplishing tasks such as pulling a plow or a wagon. At first, farming was done largely by hand with few specific tools, later advancements made the job easier and more productive. These new farming techniques were not instantly accepted by people around the globe when they first came to be. Field peasants were weary of these new techniques and were slow to adapt to their changing environments. (Moon, 2013) These people had their ways of cultivating land that was passed on through new generations. Over time though these methods weren’t as efficient due to population growth in a changing world. Other places such as the Great Plains in North America, adapted quickly to use the new technology of oxen and plows to cultivate land. First, however, the farmer needed a yoke. The pioneers on the upper plains “had to ‘make everything and had to be as ingenious as shipwrecked soldiers.’" (Nadir, 2015) Because trees were so scarce on the Great Plains, the wood used for yokes, fences, houses, and fuel was practically worth more than a life. Everett Dick, a 19th century Nebraska farmer, stated: In those gun-toting days in Nebraska, if you had something against your neighbor, it was safer to whip out your gun and shoot him than to cut down his trees… Often a killer got away scot-free; but no such subterfuge could be claimed by a tree mutilator. It was the penitentiary for him..." (Dick 1975) The ox yoke on display at the Durham museum is a handmade neck yoke. We suspect it was made around 1880-1900 out of a hardwood. The neck yoke is most popularly used in the United States for several reasons. Neck yokes offer a few advantages such as comfort for the animal on uneven terrain, maneuverability, and are not custom fitted allowing for use on different oxen. Neck yokes are relatively easy to make even for someone new to woodworking, and safer to use for a novice at working with cattle. (Rapp, 2015) An important factor in why the neck yoke was used in the states was they were traditionally used in England, therefore culturally implemented by settlers and their descendants. (Conroy) Yokes have been made with wood, as well as with metal, or a combination of the two. (Rapp, 2015) Three different types of yoke are commonly used with oxen today: the head yoke, the neck yoke, and the withers yoke. Head yokes are custom fitted to the horns of a single animal. Neck yokes are attached around the neck of an oxen, where they push with their neck, chest and shoulders. Withers yokes are attached on the shoulder ridge and so, are commonly used on cattle breeds with humps. The versatility of oxen expands that of simply pulling a cart or plow. Oxen have also been used in the timber industry by being “the ones who skidded [pulled] the fallen trees from the forest”, a job that was dependent on these oxen. (Hribal, 2003) Historically oxen have been used for labor and agriculture over other animals like horses for several reasons. First, oxen are simply cheaper to purchase and easier to maintain. A wooden yoke could also be purchased at a relatively inexpensive price. (Dick, 1975) Oxen also provide better quality manure to fertilize the fields than other farm animals. “He [the ox] not only pulled the plow, harrowed the fields, threshed the grain, and perhaps hauled some of it to the market," the farmer John Moore noted, "all the while providing the manure for the next year’s crop.” The lack of wood meant that yokes from the early years of farming were often manufactured with other farm equipment and brought to the Great Plains, which then became invaluable to the farmers who began to sodbust the plains. Plowing through unbroken prairie could take years if done alone, even longer and more difficult to do without a team of oxen. Yoked oxen were critical for the early pioneers of the Midwest. With the introduction of the yoke to this region people were finally able to make use of the land for farming by breaking through the hard sod. “Breaking prairie sod required a plow weighing [at least] 30 to 50 kg, typically powered by six to eight oxen” and up to 14 oxen were used to sod-bust across the plains. (Rhoads, 2016) According to an Omaha World Herald article written in 1929, one farmer kept his ox team in use till “more than a thousand acres of land were broken,” when the farmer “sold the two oxen…in 1883 and the yoke was stored away.” (OWH, 1929) This is a great example of how important yokes and oxen were to farmers and how they were kept for as long as possible. Farming communities like those surrounding Omaha in the upper Midwest were products of plowing. Prior to the introduction of the plow and the oxen that pulled it, the landscape, according to William Heat-Moon in PrairyErth was “eternal prairie and grass, with occasional groups of trees.” (Heat-Moon, 2001) Pioneers did not have the strength to clear the land on their own. Sod is the tough soil of the Great Plains, it is typically covered in tall grass and was often hard enough that houses could be built out of it. The earliest communities on the Great Plains were the Native Americans who roamed the grasslands in search of food and shelter, they were followed in the early-to-mid 1800s by American settlers and explorers. These new people brought modern farming and work animals to the Great Plains. It was only with the integration of working animals before land was of any use to permanent settlements for farming. Oxen were best suited to handle the rolling landscape and thick prairie grass, the yoke and plow were necessary to make the plains yield to European agriculture. As the maps in the appendix show, there was a dramatic change as a result of the yoked oxen being introduced to the Great Plains. The hardships of the plains made the yoke and plow necessary, and through the hard work of yoked oxen teams, both the plains and the quality of life on them had changed forever. These changes were not just physical to the environment but there were also notable changes to social status of humans as well. Once farmers were able to cultivate the prairie lands it became a massive place for agriculture to occur. “Larger landowners sometimes negotiated a formal contract with sodbusters” to break up the land for them and were in turn paid for their services. (Schob, 1973) This was due to the population of people in the plains becoming so large that people could sell work to landowners who then wouldn’t have to do the hard work of sod-busting on their own farms. All of this changed once the severe environmental impacts made themselves known. Due to the sod-busting that occurred, followed by the cultivation of never-seen-before crops like corn in this region, the Great Plains changed drastically. (Wishart, 2018) There are very few places, if any, today that would look like they did before this sod-busting occurred. There was suddenly new species of plants and animals to compete for the soil and water that native species had had access to. This competition led to the further depletion of topsoil and nutrients as farmers continued to plow more land. Sod busting did more than allow new species into the area, "sod busting, wind and drought combined to strip away friable soils." (Landa and Feller, 2010) With these factors draining soil of its nutrients, more land was needed to be plowed in order for farmers to maintain the amount harvested. The cycle of over plowing and planting worsened the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. This was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and the ability for agriculture of the American prairie. "A widely respected authority on world food problems, George Borgstrom, has ranked the creation of the Dust Bowl as one of the three worst ecological blunders in history." (Worster, 1979) During the drought of the 1930s, topsoil was no longer anchored by the roots of prairie grass turned to dust. This dust was then blown away into huge, blackening clouds by prevailing winds. Droughts had happened before but there had always been prairie grass to hold moisture and soil, now there was nothing to stop the black clouds from covering the plains. This period of drought and major erosion was not exclusively caused by sodbusting but may have been less severe without farmers doing this to the land. After the Dust Bowl period farmers realized that they surpassed the limits of the land that something needed to change in the Great Plains region. “The true period of adaptation was in the transition era, between about 1930 and 1940, when farmers first reached the natural limits of environment, passed them, and were pulled back by nature.” (Cunfer, 2005) This quote from On the Great Plains summarizes how resilient nature is in its ability to recover after such vast ecological damage has occurred. This transition was not originally a choice of farmers but rather it was natures way of showing how its limits had been surpassed. Devastating impacts to the Earth, as seen in the Great Plains with Dust Bowl, are not exclusive to this region. There have been major environmental changes to the globe all caused by humans. These impacts have lead some people to think that it should be deemed the start of a new epoch called the Anthropocene. Human impacts have had on the environment globally is without a doubt drastic. “Through harvesting, deforestation, and conversion of grasslands and wetlands, humans have reduced the stock of global terrestrial plant mass by as much as 45% in the last 2000 years.” (Goudie, 2018) This destruction has exponentially increased over time with the different advancements made. Even today oxen are still widely used. In 1890, there were 1,117,494 oxen reported in the United States census. (Moore, 1961) Even today, there are hundreds of millions of oxen still used on small scale farms. The reasoning for using oxen on many of these small-scale farms is strikingly similar to the past reasoning; it is simply cheaper. Oxen are no longer compared to other working animals, but rather to machinery. Buying a tractor new would be significantly more expensive than buying claves. However, calves require much time, work, and training before they are ready to be yoked for plowing a field. A better comparison might be that of a tractor, costing $15,000, versus a team of grown and well-trained oxen, costing about $1,000 to $2,500. (Collins, 2013) This is still significantly lower in cost than a new tractor which would also require an input of gasoline, maintenance, and other issues that may arise. Oxen on the other hand, will eat the grass where they are kept and provide valuable fertilizer and even after death they have some value in being eaten as meat. (DMO, 2011) Humans have impacted the environment since the introduction of fire. Taking the once endless expanse of tall grass and adjusting the land for Euro-American farming practices, the plains were changed forever with the use of the ox yoke. Just as cultivated land in the Great Plains drastically increased in the 1900’s, human impacts on the environment globally have greatly increased over time. There have been negative impacts followed with periods of recovery for the Great Plains. This is also seen in other regions of the globe where humans have populated the land but with more devastation than recovery. Since the birth of the human race, devastating changes have been made all over the globe; are these impacts enough to constitute a new era, the Anthropocene? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jen Luttrell Abbey Rieber Nicole Shintani Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Collins, Rob. “Small Farming With Oxen - Animals - GRIT Magazine.” Grit, Apr. 2013, https://www.grit.com/farm-and-garden/farming-with-oxen-zm0z13mazgou. Accessed March 25, 2018. Conroy, Drew. "Ox Yokes: Culture, Comfort and Animal Welfare" (PDF). World Association for Transport Animal Welfare and Studies. Cunfer, Geoff. On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2005. Daily Mail Reporter. “Farmers across America Ditch Tractors for Oxen in Bid to Beat Rising Fuel Prices.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 9 May 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385193/Take-bull-horns-Farmers-America-trade-tractors-oxen-beat-soaring-fuel-prices.html. Accessed March 24, 2018. 3 May 2011. Dick, Everett. "Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska. Conquering the Great American Desert: Nebraska." Nebraska State Historical Society Publications (1975). Goudie, Andrew. Human Impact on the Natural Environment: Past, Present and Future. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2018. Hribal, Jason. ""Animals Are Part of the Working Class": A Challenge to Labor History." Labor History 44.4 (2003): 435-53. Landa E.R. In a Supporting Role: Soil and the Cinema. In: Landa E., Feller C. (eds) Soil and Culture. Springer, Dordrecht. 2010 Luebke, Frederick C. Nebraska: An Illustrated History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Milisauskas, Sarunus & Janusz Kruk. “Utilization of cattle for traction during the later Neolithic in Southeastern Poland.” Antiquity, Vol. 65, No. 248. September 1991. pp. 562-566 Moon, David. “The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia's Grasslands, 1700-1914” Oxford University Press. 2013. Moon, William Least Heat. PrairyErth. Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Accessed March 25, 2018.Moore, John H. “The Ox in the Middle Ages.” Agricultural History, vol. 35, no. 2, 1961, pp. 90–93. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3740550 Nadir, Leila C. "Time Out of Place." Cather Studies.10 (2015): 68-96. Accessed March 25, 2018. Pullen, Daniel J. "Ox and Plow in the Early Bronze Age Aegean." American Journal of Archaeology 96, no. 1 (1992): 45-54. doi:10.2307/505757. Rapp, Callene. "The Art of Making an Ox Yoke: Working with Wood Can Be a Challenge, but the Finished Product Is Well worth the Effort." Grit 133, no. 2 (2015): 60. Rhoads, et al. “Historical Changes in Channel Network Extent and Channel Planform in an Intensively Managed Landscape: Natural versus Human-Induced Effects.” Geomorphology, vol. 252, 2016, pp. 17-31. Schob, David E. "Sodbusting on the Upper Midwestern Frontier, 1820-1860." Agricultural History 47, no. 1 (1973): 47-56. "State's Last Ox Yoke." Omaha World Herald, May 26, 1929. Accessed March 16, 2018. Wishart, David. J. "Encyclopedia of the Great Plains." Encyclopedia of the Great Plains | AGRICULTURE. Accessed April 22, 2018. http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ag.001. Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/2b2f89653fc0231cc74b330a688be351.jpg c4e5bbc72ad5b3891b4c316de0212baa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Samantha Arrowheads Description An account of the resource Images of the arrowheads located at the Durham museum. From the shape of these, it can be determined what region of the United States they most likely came from. Photograph by Ali Cunningham. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Physical Object An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Arrowheads Subject The topic of the resource Arrowheads are one of the most recognized tools from the Native American tribes. Along with fire, tribes in Nebraska like the Omaha likely used them for hunting. Native Americans used fire and projectile weapons to herd and hunt animals. This resulted in significant environmental changes in the Omaha area. Fire use changed plant communities. Some became more fire-tolerant while large, long-lived trees declined. This turned large forests into grasslands. Scientists and historians argue that overhunting led to the endangerment or extinction of many species. This is part of a long, and contested, theory of overkill whose implications stretch back over 20,000 years. These changes were not only seen in Omaha. Arrowhead use and burning practices took place all over the world. If arrowheads are the start of the Anthropocene, this new age started tens of thousands of years ago. Description An account of the resource The Anthropocene is a new age defined by a changing environment, due to the presence of human action. Anthropocene discourse is largely Eurocentric, privileging changes wrought by European Empires, the expansion of global capital, or industrial transformations of the environment (Carrington, 2016). Global modifications of the environment have a deeper lineage, however. One such lineage is the use of Arrowheads and other tools by native American tribes. Arrowheads are an important artifact for many Native American tribes, including the Omaha tribe. Arrowheads are important in Omaha’s environmental history because they represent pre-Columbian management of the Plains landscape. These arrowheads link Omaha’s environmental history to the global history of the Anthropocene because they represent the changes produced by human hunting. The peoples of the Plains used projectiles and fire mold the environment to their needs. Although distinctly American, they point to the larger implications of these tools on global environments. The territory of Nebraska was home to diverse peoples long before the arrival of Europeans. The city of Omaha takes its name from the Omaha tribe who originally migrated west from modern Ohio (Wakeley, 1917). Originally, they were mainly hunters and farmers, then they took part in fur trading, and eventually came under the control of their powerful allies, the Pawnee tribe (Fletcher, 2013). During the tribe’s history they are noted to have faced hardships from the enemies of the Pawnee tribe, who were the Sioux tribe. They also faced hardships from smallpox and other disease. From war and disease, they had a population of under 300 in the early 1800s, from almost 3,000 a few decades earlier (Legends of America - The Omaha Indians). The arrowheads were used for hunting by most indigenous people who lived on the Great Plains of North America, like the Omaha. Arrowheads are made in a variety of shapes, most often based on the region in which they were made. Based on the size and color of the arrowheads presented at The Durham Museum (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/229">Figure I</a>), our arrowheads are most likely Samantha Arrows, which are primarily found in the Northern Plains of the United States (Samantha Arrowhead). Arrowheads are historically important because many tribes were migratory, which required that they find ways to carry their belongings and possessions with them. They often camped near rivers where they hunted for bison and found edible plants in the spring (Fagan, 1994). These indigenous people used a wide variety of materials to produce arrowheads. Obsidian, for example, was a volcanic glass found in the Rocky Mountains. Chert, a crystalline quartz, had razor-sharp edges which was also used to make arrowheads. Antler was also used to make arrowheads when suitable rock material wasn’t available. Some arrowheads were also reusable. Analysis from the Gila River in Arizona found that some arrow points were used to hunt large animals and they could be retrieved and used again while other unnotched points were only used one time and were usually used to kill people (Loendorf, 2015). This gives more context behind how the arrowheads were used. Most often though, these Indigenous people of the plains found use for the arrowheads in hunting, specifically for bison. Hunting was integral to Native American culture and it tied Plains peoples to the land in diverse material and spiritual ways. Anthropologist David Lewis argues that Plain peoples built relationships with the land that transcended settlement; relationships that proved central to their identities (Lewis, 1995). Perhaps due to this close connection to the land, they used the environment as tools for many purposes. They planted many types of crops to feed themselves and their animals, they used the skin of hunted animals for clothing and shelter, hunted large game like bison, and fished river systems. They lived with, but also manipulated the land to provide food and shelter for themselves. Plains natives employed fire as one of these environmental tools. Charcoal layers provide archeological evidence that Native American populations all over the Midwest and in Omaha used fire regularly (Roos, 2018). The multiple charcoal layers’ present suggest frequent, large-scale burning around the time period when the Omaha tribe were present in the area. Archeologists often speculate as to the purpose of such wide-ranging fire use. Some argue that natives burned landscapes in spiritual traditions, to improve the range of sight over the landscape, or to open migration pathways (Lewis, 1993). Most agree they were used for hunting though (Delcourt and Delcourt, 1997). Tribes used controlled burning to drive the megafauna (including bison) into hunting areas. They controlled the migration of animals; thus, increasing the impact and effectiveness of hunting. This practice was especially important before the re-arrival of horses when hunting was done on foot (Hämäläinen, 2003). Fire opened diverse resources to human use such as animal meat, bones, buckskin, hair, rawhide, stomach, and horns; all of which had multiple uses including clothing, shelter, tools such as arrowheads, and many more (Natives - Native Americans). Plains burning drastically changed the composition of the land. Fire promotes plant species that are fire-tolerant, which tend to be fast-spreading, short-lived plants such as the prairie grasses that dominated much of the Midwest. Fire also suppressed large tree species that now are more prevalent (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/230">Figure II</a>). In addition to promoting fire tolerant species, anthropogenic fire regimes cleared brush, promoted seed germination, and increased resources yields (Klimaszewski-Patterson and Mensin, 2016). All of these had a large impact on the environment of the prairies in and around Nebraska for centuries. In short, this increase in fire improved soil fertility, which favored native species. This increased biodiversification of plants, including grasses, forbs, and trees. Biodiverse vegetation promoted faunal biodiversity as well. Beyond hunting, fire use was beneficial for soil fertility, which improved Native agriculture. Arrowheads used for hunting had global impacts such as the overkilling of animals like American bison. This extinction not only included bison, but also the extinction of species such as birds, lemmings, and salamanders. It is unknown how many mammalian species disappeared, but it is estimated that at least thirty-five mammalian genera had vanished. Most mammals that weighed more than one hundred pounds became extinct because of how they would have been seen as attractive to hunters. Tusked mammoths and mastodons, ground sloths, rhinoceros-sized pampatheres, and giant armadillos also vanished. Other herbivores also vanished (Krech, 2018). The overkill hypothesis states that extinction is a result because of human hunting which in turn causes death rates to exceed birth rates. This implies that humans have a direct impact on overhunting and the extinction of animals. Koch and Barnosky (2006) similarly found that about fifty thousand years ago, ecosystems all over the world were populated with large animals, but they are now extinct. They stated that worldwide, 90 genera of mammals that weighed over 44 kg had disappeared. Specifically, in North America, there used to proboscideans, giant sloths, camels, saber-tooth cats, beavers, etc. By about 10,000 years ago, most of these animals had vanished. The extinction of these large animals provides strong support that humans contributed to the extinction of these animals and this shows the relation of mass extinctions to the Anthropocene. (<a href="http://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/admin/files/show/id/231">Figure III</a>) In addition, this extinction happened on a global scale. The Native American hunting patterns did influence the species composition, though not as much as other mass extinctions. Plains peoples have shaped the environment for centuries, but it is important to consider the dynamic world that the hunters were operating in during that time. For example, Isenberg (2000) looks at how the destruction of bison as the result of a complex process that involves the natural environment of Great Plains, the invasion of the Euro Americans, as well as the economy of the Plains Indians. There were natural causes of death such as fires, drowning, and competition from other grazers that all affected the population of bison on the plains. Natural mortality also could have aided in the catastrophic decline in the population of bison. The combination of the hunting practices in the Great Plains as well as the volatility of the natural environment both aided in the destruction of these herds of animals which is important to keep in mind. North American Native Americans were not the only peoples who used fire or projectiles to change and manipulate the landscape around them. In fact, use of fire as a tool for hunting likely predates the evolution of the species (Guthrie, 1970). Human communities on every inhabited continent wielded fire and many developed projectile hunting tools (James, et. al. 1989). All over the world there was environmental changes cause by fire because the fire was being controlled by humans. Indicating global environmental, anthropogenic changes. These changes, while not representing a traditional “golden spike” should be considered when talking about the anthropocene for several reasons. Some include that it was not localized to one area, there were large scale environmental effects, and the changes were caused by human influence. The ecological changes represented in the transition to increased fire regimes is something that has continued to be studied today. The “Anthropocene” designation claims that the earth has entered the “Age of Humans”. It is important, therefore, to consider the full measure of humanity’s long history of environmental impact. These arrowheads represent the impact of fire and hunting on the global environment. Current conservation efforts in the United States and Canada have been increasingly focused on restoring the landscape to its “pristine condition, which is often defined by the absence of people (Wooster, 1996). This has the unfortunate consequence of erasing the long history of people from the landscape. If the arrowheads teach us anything, it’s that people have played an integral part in creating these “pristine” areas. The modernist bias of the Anthropocene debate threatens that as well. Where the focus is on increasing fire regimes and megafaunal grazers such as bison. While increasing megafauna like bison would be considered more like when there were no humans, increasing fire use would actually be characteristic of when Native Americans were present, not when there were no humans in North America (Matlack, 2013). Despite these minor inconsistencies, it is evident that the impact of the Native American tools used for hunting, arrowheads and fire, have caused a global impact, which is why they should be considered when discussing the Anthropocene. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ali Cunningham Kimberly Jurado Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Bohr, Roland. 2016. “Bows & Arrows.” Canada’s History 96 (5): 22–29 Carrington, Damian. 2016. “The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age” The Guardian. Accessed December 8, 2018 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth</a> Delcourt, Hazel R., and Paul A. Delcourt. "Pre-Columbian Native American Use of Fire on Southern Appalachian Landscapes." Conservation Biology 11, no. 4 (1997): 1010-014.<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2387336"> http://www.jstor.org/stable/2387336</a>. “Extinctions: Georges Cuvier.” Digital image. Understanding Evolution. Accessed November 6, 2018.<a href="https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_08"> https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_08</a> Fagan, Brian. "Bison Hunters of the Northern Plains." Archaeology 47, no. 3 (1994): 37-41. Accessed October 7, 2018<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/41766565"> http://www.jstor.org/stable/41766565</a>.  Fletcher, C. Alice. Life among the Indians: First Fieldwork among the Sioux and Omahas ed. Scherer, C. Joanna, DeMallie, J. Raymond (University of Nebraska Press, 2013). Guthrie, R. D. "Bison Evolution and Zoogeography in North America During the Pleistocene." The Quarterly Review of Biology45, no. 1 (1970): 1-15. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2817929">http://www.jstor.org/stable/2817929</a>  Isenberg, Andrew C., The Destruction of Bison. New Jersey: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Jin, Y.G, Wang, Y, Wang, W, Shang, Q.H, Cao, C.Q, Erwin, D.H. “Pattern of Marine Mass Extinction Near the Permian-Triassic Boundary in South China” Science 21 (2000). Accessed November 6, 2018.<a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5478.432"> https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5478.432</a> Klimaszewski-Patterson, Anna, Mensing, A. Scott. “Multi-disciplinary approach to identifying Native American impacts on Late Holocene forest dynamics in the southern sierra Nevada range California, USA.” Anthropocene 15 (2016): 37-48. Accessed October 8, 2018.<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213305416300327"> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213305416300327</a>  Koch, P.L., Barnowsky, A.D. “Late Quaternary Extinctions: State of the Debate” The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 37 (2006): 215-250. Accessed December 8, 2018. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415">https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.132415</a>                                                            Krech, Shepard. “Chapter One” The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (W.W. Norton and Company, 1999).<a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/krech-indian.html"> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/krech-indian.html</a> Laliberte, Andrea S., and William J. Ripple. “Wildlife Encounters by Lewis and Clark: A Spatial Analysis of Interactions between Native Americans and Wildlife.” BioScience53, no. 10 (October 2003): 994–1003. Lewis, David Rich. "Native Americans and the Environment: A Survey of Twentieth-Century Issues." American Indian Quarterly 19, no. 3 (1995): 423-50. doi:10.2307/1185599.  Lewis, David Rich. "Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the Twentieth-Century American West." The Western Historical Quarterly 24, no. 2 (1993): 203-27. doi:10.2307/970936.  Loendorf, Chris, Lynn Simon, Daniel Dybowski, M. Kyle Woodson, R. Scott Plumlee, Shari Tiedens, and Michael Withrow. 2015. “Warfare and Big Game Hunting: Flaked-Stone Projectile Points along the Middle Gila River in Arizona.” Antiquity 89 (346): 940–53. doi:10.15184/aqy.2015.28. “Natives - Native Americans” All about Bison. Accessed November 4, 2018.<a href="https://allaboutbison.com/natives/"> https://allaboutbison.com/natives/</a>  Nowacki, Gregory J, Abrams, Marc. D. “The Demise of Fire and “Mesophcation” of Forests in the Eastern United States” Image. BioScience 58 no. 2 (February 2008).  Matlack, R. Glenn. “Reassessment of the Use of Fires as a Management Tool in Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America” Conservation Biology 27 no. 5 (September 2013). Accessed October 7, 2018.<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12121"> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12121</a>  Pekka, Hämäläinen; The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures, Journal of American History, Volume 90, Issue 3, 1 December 2003, Pages 833–862,<a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3660878"> https://doi.org/10.2307/3660878</a>  Roos, I. Christopher, Zedeno, N. Maria, Hollenback, L. Kacy, Erlick, M.H. Mary. “Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium.” National Academy of Sciences. August, 2018. Accessed October 7, 2018.<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/115/32/8143/tab-article-info"> http://www.pnas.org/content/115/32/8143/tab-article-info</a> “Samantha Projectile Point, Samantha Arrowhead” Projectile Points Database. Accessed October 7, 2018.<a href="http://www.projectilepoints.net/Points/Samantha_Dart.html"> http://www.projectilepoints.net/Points/Samantha_Dart.html</a>  Steven R. James, R. W. Dennell, Allan S. Gilbert, Henry T. Lewis, J. A. J. Gowlett, Thomas F. Lynch, W. C. McGrew, Charles R. Peters, Geoffrey G. Pope, Ann B. Stahl, and Steven R. James, "Hominid Use of Fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene: A Review of the Evidence [and Comments and Replies]," Current Anthropology 30, no. 1 (Feb., 1989): 1-26.<a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/203705"> https://doi.org/10.1086/203705</a> “The Omaha Indians - True Nebraskans” Legends of America: Exploring history, destinations, people, & legends of this great country since 2003. Accessed December 8, 2018. <a href="https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-omaha/">https://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-omaha/</a> Wakeley, C. Arthur. Omaha: The Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska (The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1917) Wooster, M. Martin. 1996. “The Digest: Science and environment.” American Enterprise. 7, no. 4: 90. Accessed October 8, 2018.<a href="http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=4e0b8517-15ba-420a-bde4-4c1d4d1767fd%40sessionmgr4007&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=9607104524&db=bth"> </a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Fire Hunting Lithic Tools Overkill Projectiles https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/aaaa3a776d204afbb0d68f69a0d166bc.jpg 1b4476cd886150262d0aaa742ed80eba Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Branding Iron Subject The topic of the resource Our object photographed at the Durham Museum on 9/10/22 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Elise Gooding-Lord Bridget Courtney Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Branding Iron Subject The topic of the resource Branding irons marked cattle ownership. Ranchers used brands on the Great Plains to prevent theft or miscommunication. This is indicative of an era when producers and consumers of beef spread across vast distances. The iron is not specific to a ranch but symbolizes changes in the cattle economy during the 19th and 20th centuries. As demand for red meat grew- the supply could not keep up. Sources of meat grew more distant. Foreign environments came to feed American appetites and similar changes took place around the world. Shipping meat across distances hides its economic and environmental costs. These costs do not disappear but become a dept paid by future consumers and the planet. This branding iron symbolizes the relationship in the Anthropocene. Description An account of the resource While a device that was created to permanently burn cattle with an identifying symbol may not sound important in relation to the environment, that isn’t actually the case. The branding iron may not seem like a lot at first glance, but in reality, it is an important artifact in not only Omaha’s environmental history, but also global environmental history. This is because it serves as a symbol of the significance of the cattle ranching industry. The cattle ranching industry has had major effects on not only the environment in Nebraska and the rest of the United States, but the world environment as well. The demand for red meat in the United States accelerated the cattle ranching industry. As the consumer demand for meat rose- the requirement of materials to produce beef, such as pastureland, laborers, feed, all increased exponentially. These concerns were addressed by outsourcing red meat production, which has led to food production becoming more environmentally impactful. This same phenomenon took place worldwide and has created the global food web that we have present in today’s society. Therefore, the branding iron, while relatively small, symbolizes the large effect that its industry has had on global history and therefore the Anthropocene. Branding cattle is necessary on ranches to differentiate between two herds that share the same grazing space (Lombard 226). Brands are also useful when it comes to preventing the theft of livestock, as a permanent mark on the animal would make it impossible for anyone to try to claim it as their own, if the brand doesn’t belong to them (“Livestock Brands”). These brands often represent the owners “character” given there are no requirements for the symbols to represent anything specific such as the name of the ranch or owner, though they should be decently simple and recognizable (“Livestock Brands”). Once a brand is designed it can be registered for in states that have brand registers, so long as it is a unique symbol that no other ranch is using, which can be difficult to achieve due to the large number of existing brands (“Livestock Brands”). Due to the fact that not all states register their brands and the fact that there is no national brand registration book, it is difficult to determine both where our brand comes from. The simplicity of the branding iron has allowed for it to be used for centuries; however it also makes dating our branding iron problematic as there have seemingly been little changes to the structure of the branding iron since its introduction to the New World (“Livestock Brands”). The brand itself appears to be intact, though the exact symbol may not be obvious. While it appears to be a lowercase “h”, which is what the Durham Museum describes it as, brands are typically composed of capital letters, which means that it is possible that our brand depicts something other than a “h” (“Livestock Brands”). Branding symbols can also be made up of multiple characters or pictures, with brands today often being made of at least three symbols due to the number of existing brands, this means that our brand may not be one symbol, but multiple combined together to make one picture that happens to look like an lowercase “h” (“Livestock Brands”). It is a little humorous that something that was created to assist with identification can be so hard to identify, but the value that the branding iron holds as a symbol of anthropogenic environmental change is still clear. Branding irons in general played an important role in the history of cattle ranching. The origin of cattle branding can be traced back to Egypt in 2700 B.C., but it made its way to the New World from Europe because of Hernando Cortez in 1541 (“Livestock Brands”) This happened because many Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America participated with cattle ranching, and their techniques would have eventually been observed by Texans due to their proximity and eventually adopted by them (“The Origin” 122). The original brands from Spain tended to be complicated with beautiful designs, which made them not very practical, leading to American ranchers to create brands that were more simplistic, easy to remember and produce, while also being effective and difficult to change (“Livestock Brands”). When cattle ranching first became prominent in the United States it was primarily in the Texas and California areas (“The Overemphasis” 2). While ranchers from both areas tried to get their ranching methods spread across the country, with Texas targeting the Great Plains and California the Great Basin neither method lasted past the end of the nineteenth century (“The Overemphasis” 9). At that point a new cattle ranching culture started to rise in popularity, this being the midwestern system of cattle ranching. This new system originated in the Midwest and mountain South, and primarily deviated from the ranching culture in Texas and California with its use of methods originating from the British highlands, instead of ones of Spanish influence (“The Overemphasis” 9). The midwestern system also tended to have more of a focus on the welfare of the cattle and had practices in place that helped the cattle survive through winters and harsh weather, while the Texas and California systems didn’t (“The Overemphasis” 9). This system can be traced back to the 1850s, specifically in Nebraska with its “road ranches” that were set up along the trails, but it only started to spread across the country after the collapse of the Texas and California systems, both of which happened around the 1880s (“The Overemphasis” 12). With the midwest system of cattle ranching being the most popular by the end of the nineteenth century, it would eventually be the system that most ranchers or future ranchers would adapt once they moved out west for the new opportunities that were promised to them by the United States following the Civil War. The end of the Civil War in the United States opened opportunities for Euro-American settlers to move out West. The United States Government incentivized people to move with the Homestead Act of 1862 that allowed for any US citizen to claim 160 acres of land (Homestead Act). The act had requirements of “improving” the land in the first five years, but the Homestead Act was very indistinct about how the land had to change in order to meet these requirements. Individuals and companies began abusing The Homestead Act, for economic and personal gain, and by the end of 1934 10% of all US lands were distributed into individual hands (Potter 360). These lands were not the US government’s to distribute however- the vast majority of them were inhabited by Native peoples, with established communities, hunting practices and lifestyles (Pritzke 8). The Homestead Act did not account for this and there was a mass displacement of Native peoples in a violent manner. This led to conflict throughout the country as Natives defended their homes, this time period is known as the Indian Wars (Michno 364). As Euro-Americans started occupying this land, the native bison were seen as a nuisance, untamable, and most importantly not profitable (Hornaday 457). Moving forward the bison were killed off in order for the preferred bovine cattle to take their place (Hornaday 466). There was lots of new business in the West including mining, farming, and cattle ranching (Kivette 177). The colonial practices that encouraged a complete change in landscape and lifestyle by displacing the current ecosystems made the ideal conditions for cattle ranching to thrive. Cattle ranching had lots of potential because during the Civil War, the populations of cattle in Texas had gone unchecked and were now substantially large (Russel 6). The cattle were unbranded as well, making them easy targets for theft (Gard 1). Cattle are not suited for every climate, they require large grazing areas and moderate temperatures which can be seen throughout the central and northern plains, making it seemingly ideal for cattle ranches. (Kim 112). However, cattle also required moving each season to keep the grass plentiful and the cattle alive through the winter (Niedringhaus 18). This led to the development of a rotational grazing system for cattle ranches (Niedringhaus 20). Cattle ranching also requires immense amounts of resources to be brought in such as feed, laborers, ranching equipment, and more (Beef Checkoff 9). The ranching system along with many other emerging economic systems, all needed an efficient way to receive goods quickly- and the answer was the railroad system (Kinbacher 194). The Pacific Railroad Act in 1862 marked the creation of the largest rail system in the US, one that started construction in Omaha, Nebraska (Pacific Railroad Act). The formation of this railroad was the start of a new transportation method that accelerated the production and consumer market. The terminal end in Omaha meant numerous economic opportunities for development, and at one point in the mid-20th century Omaha had the largest stockyards in the country (Kivett 178). Once the basics of cattle ranching were understood and the optimal conditions were met, cattle ranching could flourish into the start of the 20th century. By the start of the 20th century, cattle ranching was an economic powerhouse, and all the kinks had worked out in order to create the most profit per carcass. In 1909 the US was producing 6,915 million pounds of beef alone each year and imported a mere 2 million (USDA). This mass production of meat was creating a sudden availability of red meat on the market, which made the everyday consumer more eager to consume red meat (Holecheck 119). The US kept up with the demand for red meat until the start of the first World War (Holecheck 118). The war meant less men to work, and more mouths to feed each day. This was the first time that the US decided to outsource their meat production and open the trade doors for the beef to come from non-domestic lands, in 1914 the US imported 328 million pounds of beef compared to 45 million pounds the year before (USDA). The importation of beef slowed down dramatically after the end of the first world war and the American government encouraged the consumer to buy from a local source and support their hometown (Hulse 681). Then came the second World War, and with it another loss of the working class, creating a lack of red meat on the market. And in response the United States had a second uptake in beef imports. In the final year of the war, 1945, the US imported 130 million pounds of beef, and the very next year only imported 20 million pounds (USDA). This lull in imports did not last long however, in 1958 the United States established trade routes with Australia, Canada, and many others. This was in order to establish a constant red meat supply to US consumers and that year imported 1,184 million pounds of beef (USDA). After the United States had created the precedent of getting their meat from somewhere else, they got used to letting someone else do the work for them. The United States shipped the process of red meat production globally, but the costs did not disappear. The costs were instead paid by the planet, and other less wealthy countries (Ritchie 4). The exportation of this process played a key role in the destruction of world's forests becoming graze lands, as the time period of 1900 to present was when 23% of all natural surviving forests surviving on earth were converted to agricultural land-including crops and grazing land (Ritchie 5). This led to the creation of a global food web, allowing consumers to eat a cow that was butchered all the way across the world for dinner and not know any different (Boucher 45). However ignorant the consumer may be, the costs of outsourcing are innumerable and environmentally deleterious. The impacts of a global food web are compounding, and the price tag when purchasing a package of red meat from the grocery store does not include how many trees were cut down in order to allow that cow to graze (Dubay 2). Now that food is no longer being consumed on a local scale, there are transportation emissions, refrigeration processes, and added preservation stops along the way that all create a negative effect on the environment (Dubay 3). This shift from locally sourced beef to global food webs created a massive impact on our planet that can be seen here in the US and all over the world. Even though we might not know that many specific history or details about this branding iron, we know that the branding iron symbolizes the cattle ranching industry and the effects that it has had on Omaha and global history. The popularity of the cattle ranching industry helped to put Omaha on the map due to the industry’s reliance on railroad systems like Union Pacific and it helped give Omaha some of the biggest stockyards in the country. Globally the cattle ranching industry spread once it essentially got too big for the United States, who turned to outsourcing to keep up with the demand for red meat. This outsourcing would have large effects on the global environment which can still be seen and added on to today. As the population grows the need for red meat most likely will too, which would logically mean that the global environment and therefore the Anthropocene will continue to be affected by cattle ranching, or in a way, the branding iron. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bridget Courtney Elise Gooding-Lord Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Act of May 20, 1862 (Homestead Act), Public Law 37-64 (12 STAT 392); 5/20/1862; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/homestead-act, November 18, 2022] Act of July 1, 1862 (Pacific Railroad Act), (12 STAT 489); 7/1/1862; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. Anderson, Bruce. “Grasslands and Forages of Nebraska.”Rangelands, vol. 21, no. 1, 1999, pp.5–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4001500. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022. Beef Checkoff. “Quality Care and Handling Guidelines.” Beef Quality Assurance. Boucher, Doug, et al. “Cattle and Pasture.” The Root of the Problem: What’s Driving Tropical Deforestation Today, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011, pp. 41–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep00075.11. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022. Dubay, Adrianna, et al. The Water Footprint of Livestock | Mathematics of Sustainability. 16 Sept. 2018, muse.union.edu/mth-063-01-f18/2018/09/16/the-water-footprint-of-livestock. Gard, Wayne. “The Impact of the Cattle Trails.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 1, 1967, pp. 1–6. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30237939. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022. Haggerty, J. H., M. Auger, and K. Epstein. "Ranching Sustainability in the Northern Great Plains: An Appraisal of Local Perspectives." Rangelands, vol. 40, no. 3, 2018, pp. 83-91. doi:10.1016/j.rala.2018.03.005. Hiller, Tim L., et al. “Long-Term Agricultural Land Use Trends in Nebraska, 1866—2007.” Great Plains Research, vol. 19, no. 2, 2009, pp. 225–37.http://www.jstor.org/stable/23780131. Accessed 3 Nov. 2022. Holechek, Jerry L., et al. “Macro Economics and Cattle Ranching.” Rangelands, vol. 16, no. 3, 1994, pp. 118–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4001044. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. Hornaday, William Temple. The Extermination of the American Bison. United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1889. Hulse, David, and Robert Ribe. “Land Conversion and the Production of Wealth.” Ecological Applications, vol. 10, no. 3, 2000, pp. 679–82. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2641036. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. Iverson, Peter. When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Jordan, Terry G. “The Origin and Distribution of Open-Range Cattle Ranching.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 1972, pp. 85-92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42858856. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022. Jordan, Terry G. "Overemphasis of Texas as a Source of Western Cattle Ranching." (1992). Social Science Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 1972, pp. 105–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42858856. Accessed 6 Oct. 2022. Kim, S., et al. “The Effect of Socioeconomic Factors on the Adoption of Best Management Practices in Beef Cattle Production.” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Soil and Water Conservation Society, 1 May 2005, https://www.jswconline.org/content/60/3/111/tab-article-info. Kivett, Marvin F. “The Nebraska State Historical Society.” History News, vol. 22, no. 8, 1967, pp. 177–79. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42646071. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. “Livestock Brands.” Cowboy Showcase, https://www.cowboyshowcase.com/brands.html#.Y2MbUy-B06W. Lombard, Carol G., and Theodorus Du Plessis. “Beyond the Branding Iron: Cattle Brands as Heritage Place Names in the State of Montana.” Names, vol. 64, no. 4, 2016, pp. 224–233., https://doi.org/10.1080/00277738.2016.1223119. “Major Land Uses.” USDA ERS - Major Land Uses, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/. Makkar, H P S. “Review: Feed demand landscape and implications of food-not feed strategy for food security and climate change.” Animal : an international journal of animal bioscience vol. 12,8 (2018): 1744-1754. doi:10.1017/S175173111700324X Michno, Gregory. Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850-1890. Mountain Press Pub. Co., 2005. Niedringhaus, Lee I. “The N Bar N Ranch: A Legend of The Open-Range Cattle Industry 18 85-99.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 60, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25701715. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022. Potter, Lee Ann and Wynell Schamel. "The Homestead Act of 1862." Social Education 61, 6 (October 1997): 359-364. Pritzke, Frank. A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples. Oxford University Press, 2000. Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Forests and Deforestation.” Our World in Data, 9 Feb. 2021, ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation. Russell, John C. “Holding the Herd: Nelson Story’s 1866 Cattle Drive.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 68, no. 4, 2018, pp. 4–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45200812. Accessed 1 Nov. 2022. Starrs, Paul F. Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000. “Texas Cattle Trade in Omaha.” History Nebraska, https://history.nebraska.gov/texas-cattle-trade-in-omaha/. Thornton, Philip K. “Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences vol. 365,1554 (2010): 2853-67. doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0134 Union of Concerned Scientists. Cattle, Cleared Forests, and Climate Change: Scoring America’s Top Brands on Their Deforestation-Free Beef Commitments and Practices. Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep17253. Accessed 2 Nov. 2022. USDA ERS - Food Availability (per Capita) Data System. www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per-capita-data-system. USDA ERS - Livestock and Meat International Trade Data. www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/livestock-and-meat-international-trade-data/livestock-and-meat-international-trade-data. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/23f397e1fc7db3b6cfd18ca86d383067.jpg 77fb12369de5bea08f5741721e9d6896 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 1. Description An account of the resource This is a map from 1869 that depicts Union Pacific’s first large scale railroad track. Map by Colton & Co. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Colton & co. Nebraska. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~209055~5003979:Nebraska- Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1869 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource David Rumsey Historical Map Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/f26df60c7c7618915f662d6ae9daea7d.jpg fa9eb03ec1eb0881fd0e465c9c42073a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 2. Subject The topic of the resource Douglas County. Description An account of the resource This is a map from 1885 showing the additional 4 tracks that Union Pacific built since its conception. Map by Everts and Kirk Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Everts and Kirk. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps1130175-28225.html Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1885 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource David Rumsey Historical Map Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/5940bd2d82beaccaa0c9ffe88c3d4d9f.jpg b2738967766d6029709486a54330c252 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 4. Description An account of the resource View of top of broadhead ax missing wooden handle. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hannah Juday Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/9c70ea1d14c291b8d466a6af48e3dc9c.jpg 27a4452080e3fd49518e984b65c8d8da Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 5 Description An account of the resource A close-up image of the beveled edge of the broad ax. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hannah Juday Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/fb19100f2156eed9029cc27dff580af6.jpg b05eff8501c964bbaba5ccbe6be3c904 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figure 6 Description An account of the resource Full view of the iron broad ax head in the Durham Museum’s collection. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hannah Juday Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broadhead Axe Subject The topic of the resource The late nineteenth-century was the great age of railroad construction. In America and around the world, they increased transportation efficiency. Like all industrial processes, railroads required an enormous amount of natural resources. This included wooden planks to hold the rails together. This broad head ax, or one like it, shaped these planks, also known as ax-ties. The amount of wood the railroads needed required wide-scale deforestation. Omaha was an important part of this story. It was the eastern edge of the Transcontinental Railroad and the home of Union Pacific. The rise of railroads drove Omaha’s growth, and the presence of railroads are globally seen. The general use of railroads has declined. The broad ax played a significant role in the establishment of railroads. This is important to the Anthropocene because it symbolizes the effects of industrialization on the environment. Description An account of the resource There have been many inventions and innovations throughout human history, but few have been as instrumental to human advancement as the ax. The ax has played a key role in acquiring wood and shaping it for uses besides fire and fuel. There are many different types of axes, and their form follows their function. Felling axes chop down trees, and pickaxes skimming and chopping through roots. The ax in The Durham Museum collection is the broad ax. Broad axes were and are used for hewing wood or turning round logs into more rectangular shapes for building. Our ax was found in the Omaha area, but there is one problem with finding an ax here. Why would an ax be in an area that has historically had few trees? We believe the ax was used to shape logs into small planks, or rail ties. Omaha’s historic role as a center of continental railroad construction justifies this claim. The broadhead ax was instrumental in constructing railroads when the Union Pacific railroad was expanding across the Midwest, and similarly influential to global rail development. The broad ax was a tool of labor. Many households had access to this tool, and it could also be found at worksites. As seen in Figures 4, 5, and 6, the ax features a very long, or broad, shaped blade. The blade almost looks like a fan, with rounded edges and a narrower base. One side of the blade is a straight, flat edge. The other side of the blade is beveled, meaning that there is a slant in the iron to create a sharp edge. The broad ax in The Durham Museum collection is made of iron, though it is missing its wooden handle. Most broad axes had a shorter handle which would slide entirely though the metal ax head, as seen in Figure 4 (Sloan 2002, 14). The broad ax was a common belonging of early Euro-American settlers. While it was not the ideal tool for felling lumber, it was useful to create wooden beams to structure houses or cabins. The ax operated as a sort of chisel, where the flat edge of the blade drove into the wood, creating a straight edge. The beveled edge would then cut through the excess wood, cleaving it from the straight edge (Sloan 2002, 15). Nebraska and other states of the Great Plains do not have a large number of trees useful for widespread lumber use. Settlers had to build homes, but the supply of trees was few compared to other states further north or east. However, as white settlers began expanding westward following the Louisiana Purchase, they needed resources and tools in order to build homes. Permanent structures often required square beams, ideally suited to the broad ax. As the settlers moved into what would become Nebraska throughout the first half of the nineteenth-century, small settlements like Council Bluffs, IA and Bellevue, NE took shape. Omaha was established in 1854, and by 1860 had a population of 1,883 (“Population of Nebraska Incorporated Places, 1860 to 1920” 2010). The broad ax was a fundamental tool of this early period of settlement and urbanization. The broad ax had an even more significant role in Omaha’s history: the construction of railroads. Railways were introduced to the United States in Massachusetts in the early nineteenth-century. While the locomotive steam engine was still being developed, a series of small wooden tramways appeared in the Northeast primarily as a temporary mode of transport for construction or mining (Grant 2005, 2). The first commercial railroad was called the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, founded in 1827 out of Maryland (Previts and Samson 2000, 6) and the first commercial locomotive built in the United States was finished in 1830 in New York (Middleton 1941, 37). By the outbreak of the American Civil War, interest in constructing railroads in the vast interior of the continent gained support. The Union Pacific railroad was the middleman in connecting both sides of the continent by rail. The company started in 1862 and Omaha was its terminus. In order to have railroads though, you have to have wooden planks for railroad ties (Union Pacific, 2022). With numerous tracks laid, the broad ax surely had widespread use because of rail ties. Ties are wooden boards that are anchored to the earth as a foundation to hold the steel rails. Lumber would be cut into long square slats with the assistance of the broad ax, squaring off the rounded edges of the logs. After being cut, the ties were then dried, ridding them of any moisture and then treated with a wood preservative (Middleton 1941, 20). Railroad construction demanded millions of cross ties, making the production of such items critical for rail’s success (Union Pacific). Beyond railroad construction, railroad maintenance required the replacement of cross ties. Nebraska and other Great Plains states did not have a ready supply of timber, however. The lumber required to build the railroads likely had to be shipped to Omaha via the Missouri river or nearby small railroads. Finding wood for construction turned out to be one of the biggest problems for the early years of Union Pacific (Union Pacific). Any adequate wood was used, but Cedar trees were primarily chopped down in North Platte and hewn in Wyoming once the railroad made it to those locations (Union Pacific). Those resources sufficed the railroad for a while before they turned to getting their wood from the Pacific Northwest and Canada like they do in today (Union Pacific). By the 1940s, there were more than a billion cross ties in use across the United States, and millions needed replacement annually (Middleton 1941, 20). Figure 1, which is from 1869, shows the slow start Union Pacific had as it was only able to make 1 track in its first 7 years. We can see there was some more progress as Union Pacific made an additional 4 to 5 tracks between 1869 and 1885; the year Figure 2 was created. Omaha as a city was also shaped by the railroads. The city expanded around the train depots, with the downtown area developing just beyond the railroad for accessibility and convenience. Just as the needs of Union Pacific altered the layout of the city, the population experienced rapid change and development due in part to the rail system. The city grew from less than 2,000 people in 1860 to 16,083 people in 1870, a growth of over 750%. Over the next two decades, the population exploded to 140,452 (“Population of Nebraska Incorporated Places, 1860 to 1920”, 2010). The next 130 years would prove to be prosperous for Union Pacific. The company is now the largest rail company in the country with over 32,000 miles of tracks spanning the western two thirds of the U.S. (Union Pacific). In the process, Union Pacific has also formed relationships with other companies to enhance their shipping capabilities to reach parts of the world beyond their homeland. For the most part, the Omaha community has benefited from the many railroads that have been laid down. The widespread use of locomotives was a pivotal moment in history for most western societies. Railroads moved people, manufactured goods, and raw materials across the country rapidly, without the labor, livestock, and supporting supplies previously needed for large scale transport (Ellis 1968, 19). Railroads required heavy industry to manufacture the locomotives and steel rails. They also needed large amounts of lumber and coal to lay down the tracks and to fuel the enormous furnaces of commercial engines (Lewis 1998, 81). Railroads were one of Omaha’s earliest industries and created steady jobs for its residents as engineers, support staff, and manual laborers (Peterson, 2011). Some community members most likely handled the broadhead axes themselves when they worked for Union Pacific. The broad ax was used to literally lay the foundations for railroads. But how has humanity's desire for growth impacted its relationship with the environment? The rail system in the U.S was a key component in our early advancement. Railroads were necessary for transporting large amounts of resources nationally and internationally. Railroads simultaneously connected people with far off lands and made travel easier and far more convenient. As with all human advancement, there have been unforeseen negative consequences in the form of maltreatment and environmental damage. Resources had to be shipped across the country to construct the railroads. This means there has to be large-scale deforestation going on in order to supply railroads with the necessary wood. One company in the Appalachian Mountains chopped down as much as 1,162,900 feet of sawed lumber and 57,749 railroad ties in the span of a year (Lewis, 1998, 43). The Pacific Northwest encountered rapid and reckless deforestation, as seen in Figure 7, which contributed to the erosion of the mountainsides of the Cascade Mountains (Ellis 1968, 139). Additionally, railroads affect the process of deforestation. Railroad systems are used in Siberia to transport lumber from Russian forests to consumers in China. Over 16 million acres of Russian forests were cut in 2018 for economic gain, leading the world in deforestation rates (Kramer 2019). Railroads have been a prime mover of goods, resources, and people since the nineteenth-century, and thus have served as drivers of anthropogenic changes to the landscape and environment. A myriad of natural resources is needed to construct the railroad tracks, not to mention the large quantity needed to maintain the rail system. The amount of land that has been devoted to railroads and the businesses surrounding railroads is immense, with just under 140,000 miles of tracks in the United States alone (U.S Department of Transportation, 2020). Internationally, “the most basic environmental impact from…rail is the destruction of habitat to create a transportation corridor” (Losos, et al. 2019, 8). Devotion of linear infrastructures like railways directly correlates to rates of deforestation (Losos, et al. 2019, 14). Other parts of the world have been impacted too. In India, much of the deforestation that is seen today can be dated all the way back to the nineteenth-century when railroad construction began (Das 2010, 38). Today there are roughly 67,546 miles of rail on the Indian landscape (Indian Railways, 21). In Europe, the Deutsche Bahn (DB) rail system seems to blanket the continent with 643 million miles of railroads being laid by 2013 (Marketline Industry Profile 2015, 18). Furthermore, it is projected that global rail networks will increase in size because of advancing energy sources (Popp and Boyle 2017). Overall railroad construction has terraformed the surface of the earth to fit the needs of growing consumers. It therefore promotes the notion of the Capitalocene: a geological change that has been driven by the effects of capitalism. The need for transportation has long been an idea with the notion of profit at the forefront of companies. The siphoning of resources for the sake of economic progress has taken its toll on the earth, a toll that will be seen for many years to come. The iron ax head represents the impact that rail has had on the environment and promotes the notion that humans have changed earth’s natural systems for their own gain. Since the booming days of railroads and the industrial revolution, axes at large have decreased in use. This is largely in part to human advancement and creating more efficient ways to cut down trees. The mechanization of the world now allows us to befall larger trees at faster rates with less laborers. Now people and corporations use chainsaws or circular saws to cut their railroad ties. Compared to the broadhead ax, this saves a lot of time and increases efficiency. Axes today are commonly used to chop wood for fires or for hobbies. In fact, Ax throwing has become a popular activity across the western world. While axes are less popular, railways for personal use are more active than ever. In 2019, Amtrak trains carried over 3 and a half million passengers across the United States (Lazo 2019). Subway and elevated rail systems exist within larger cities internationally, moving commuters and tourists. Elsewhere in the world, railroad technology has evolved to use metal tracks, thereby eliminating the need for the broadhead ax. High-speed rail is developing at a rapid rate, allowing people to travel at unthinkably fast speeds. For example, in Japan, there is a passenger rail system that can move people at hundreds of miles per hour, as opposed to the early steam engines which a horse could outrun. Some even argue that railways are a more ecologically conscious form of transportation than cars due to its concentration of access points. If a person can only access trains from spread out points, the population grows around that point and does not spread elsewhere. If they do not go elsewhere, more land is left untouched by humans (Losos et al. 2019, 19). While the hewing ax is no longer common, it is undeniable that it had a major impact when it came to the creation of rail systems across the world, similar to the railroads found here in Omaha. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Colton Miller Hannah Juday Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Carpenter, T. G. The Environmental Impact of Railways. Chichester, Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. Colton & co. Nebraska. 1869. Das, Pallavi. "Colonialism and the Environment in India: Railways and Deforestation in 19th Century Punjab." Journal of Asian and African Studies (Leiden) 46, no. 1 (2011): 38-53. Dilts, James D. The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation's First Railroad, 1828-1853. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993. Ellis, Hamilton. The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Railways. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1968. Everts and Kirk. Douglas County. 1885. “Freight Rail Overview.” Federal Railroad Administration. U.S. Department of Transportation, Last modified July 28, 2020. https://railroads.dot.gov/rail-network-development/freight-rail-overview. Grant, H. Roger. The Railroad: The Life Story of a Technology. Greenwood Technographies.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005. “Indian Railways: Lifeline to the Nation.” Indian Railways. Ministry of Railways-Railway Board, July 15, 2021. https://indianrailways.gov.in/railwayboard/view_section.jsp?lang=0&id=0%2C1%2C261 Klein, Maury. Union Pacific. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987. Kramer, Andrew E. “As the Chinese Cut down Siberia's Forests, Tensions with Russians Rise.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, July 25, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/world/europe/russia-china-siberia-logging.html. Lazo, Luz. “Amtrak touts record ridership, revenue for fiscal 2019.” The Washington Post. Nash Holdings, November 8, 2019. Lewis, Ronald L. Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920. 1998. Link, Alessandra. “Editing for Expansion: Railroad Photography, Native Peoples, and the American West, 1860–1880.” Western Historical Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2019): 281–313. https://doi.org/10.1093/whq/whz043. Losos, Elizabeth, Alexander Pfaff, Lydia Olander, Sara Mason, and Seth Morgan. “Reducing Environmental Risks from Belt and Road Initiative Investments in Transportation Infrastructure.” World Bank Group, January 2019. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/700631548446492003/pdf/WPS8718.pdf. “Market Line Industry Profile: Railroads in France.” 2014. Railroads Industry Profile: France, January, 1–35. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=bth&AN=95032145&site=ehost-live. Middleton, P. Harvey. Railways and the Equipment and Supply Industry. 2nd ed. Chicago: Railway Business Association, 1941. Peterson, Jess. “A Short History of the Early Development of Omaha, Nebraska.” Historic Omaha, (2011). http://www.historicomaha.com/hstrypag.htm#:~:text=Early%20industry%20in%20Omaha%20also,prevention%20and%20water%20delivery%20services. Popp, J. N., and S. P. Boyle. “Railway Ecology: Underrepresented in Science?” Basic and Applied Ecology 19 (March 2017): 84–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2016.11.006. “Population of Nebraska Incorporated Places, 1860 to 1920.” Nebraska State Government, (January 13, 2010). https://opportunity.nebraska.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Places-Populations_1860-1920.pdf Previts, Gary John, and William D. Samson. “Exploring the Contents of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Annual Reports: 1827–1856.” Accounting Historians Journal 27, no. 1 (June 2000): 1–42. Roberts, J. C. D. “Discursive Destabilization of Socio-Technical Regimes: Negative Storylines and the Discursive Vulnerability of Historical American Railroads.” Energy Research & Social Science 31 (September 2017): 86–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.05.031. Sloane, Eric. A Museum of Early American Tools. Mincola, New York: Dover Publications, 2002. Union Pacific. Union Pacific System Map. 2022 Union Pacific Railroad. “Station Map of South Omaha. Douglas and Sarpy Counties, Nebraska. P-4003-13.” David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. Cartography Associates, 1945. https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~329418~90097880:Station-Map-of-South-Omaha-Douglas?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=q%3AOmaha%3Bsort%3APub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1&mi=3&trs=125. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Axe Deforestation Railroad Union Pacific https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/d9cd6a72f1791abb1695b5ba3c804357.png be80ccb6b939ba94d33ff12950034c13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ferndell Iced Tea Tin - Sprague, Warner, & Co Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kyrsten Mata Katarina Wilson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/ca3a27bd8a72729e023099f606fb22e4.png 265dce9a1332dd9efe8282a1fc5f5997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ferndell Iced Tea Tin - Sprague, Warner, & Co Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kyrsten Mata Katarina Wilson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/3e73e79663b2c93a07a98513ec4c2a6d.png 3e1c321fd3e6cb5280fbcfec365a30a6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ferndell Iced Tea Tin - Sprague, Warner, & Co Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kyrsten Mata Katarina Wilson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/ee1006c304cf1dfc1d99c9923525b082.png c89f41d176856ecda20ea9b4d4bf2259 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ferndell Iced Tea Tin - Sprague, Warner, & Co Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kyrsten Mata Katarina Wilson Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Tea Tin Subject The topic of the resource Tea is one of the oldest drinks on Earth. According to Chinese legend, emperor Shen Nung discovered tea. In the following centuries, tea spread to every populated continent through global trade. The silk road was a common route used. Due to high demand, plantations mass produced tea in the late nineteenth century. This ignited the plantationocene. The plantationocene is the global and local effect plantations have on the environment and communities. It has decreased biodiversity and often exploits workers. In the early twentieth century, mass transportation helped connect goods with the public. Tea culture made its way from Chicago to Omaha through the Union Pacific Railroad. Union Pacific's headquarters are in Omaha. Various products, like tea, were connected by the wide access to industrial transportation. As the world adapts to global products and cultures, an impact continues to be made on the earth’s climate and ecosystems. Description An account of the resource In China, tea is said to be a gift from the Great Mother Goddess herself. It is supposed to bring health and longevity to the drinker. Tea is one of the oldest drinks on Earth, and its popularity has lasted to the modern day. Longevity could be said to be the beverage’s preeminent historical characteristic. Today, almost every culture has its own variety of tea. Cultural and social rituals surrounding the cultivating, preparing, and drinking of tea mirror human diversity. From Japanese tea ceremonies to British High Tea, the tea leaf sunk its teeth into globalized society hundreds of years ago and has not let go. Much can (and has) been said about the rich cultural and even spiritual significance of tea, but as with so many global commodities, the story is complex. Its elevation to a beverage of global significance has come with immense ecological and social costs that extend to the present. Tea connects China to Omaha, NE, and everywhere in between. The tea once contained in the canister held in The Durham Museum collection was a long way from its home, but the artifact is a reminder of the journey from seed, to plantation, to train, to cup. Tea has a deep connection to the plantationocene, which is the global and local effect plantations have on the environment and communities. As one of the many legends have it, tea was discovered by a Chinese healer and emperor, Shen Nung in the year 2732 (Hohenegger, 2006). He and his traveling party were taking a rest from a long journey, and they needed to boil water to ensure its drinking safety. All of a sudden, leaves from a nearby tea bush landed in the pot. Ever inquisitive, Shen Nung took a sip and was delighted with the taste. He had just had the first sip of tea. (Hohenegger, 2006) This is one of many stories of the origin of tea, and many others emphasize tea’s stimulative or healing properties. The rich green of the tea plant held spiritual significance for some. It was a “good color” that would bring health and longevity to its consumer. Tea also had practical appeal. Chinese monks drank tea to stay awake during long hours of meditation (Hohenegger, 2006). Nomads dried and compressed leaves from the tea bush into solid bricks. It became an easily transportable and nutritious drink for mobile societies. Tea became an object of intrinsic value as well; traders used tea as currency from China to Russia. (Pomeranz, 2006) The plant Camellia sinensis, or the tea bush, is native to southern China, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and northeastern India. (Xiao 2016) We will never know the national identity of the person who actually brewed the first cup of tea, but written accounts place its origin in the southwest of China. These are also the regions where agriculturalists allegedly transformed the wild plant into a agriculture crop. Regardless of its exact origin, tea was an incredibly valued resource in ancient China, both for its people’s consumption, and for consumption elsewhere. In the Tang Dynasty (618-906), tea was made the national drink of China and the already popular drink sunk its teeth even deeper into Chinese society. To satisfy the high demand, farmers replaced preexisting ecologies with fields of tea bushes. Eventually, farmers shifted from foraging to cultivating the plants to maximize output. (Zhong 2010) By year, tea was a mass agricultural crop. The Tea-horse Road was instrumental in the commerce of tea in ancient China, beginning in the Tang dynasty (Pang 2022). Consisting of two major paths in the neighboring Sichuan and Yunnan southwestern areas of China, this road connected Tibetan markets with central China, and was a central route in tea trade. Many towns and shrines were erected along this route, as commerce flowed through the towns regularly (2014). The popularity of tea stayed consistent. Even the Mongol invasion of China in years presented only a temporary reduction in volume (Perdue 2015). Tea eventually found its way off the mainland and into Japanese arms around the year 800 CE. (Varley 1989) With its rise in popularity, tea plant farming practices shifted to meet higher demand. Traditional cultivators planted tea bushes in standing forests. These “tea gardens” were ecologically sustainable. This polyculture naturally repelled pests and nourished the soil (Qi 2013). In ancient China, as a result, tea cultivation required no mass deforestation. From ancient times into modern times, tea became an increasingly global product, however, these tea gardens became harder and harder to maintain locally. Europeans discovered tea around the seventeenth century and have been hooked since. The Dutch East India Company pioneered this early trade, but European taste aesthetics did not yet favor the beverage (Rappaport 2019). Demand skyrocketed during the late eighteenth century when the British East India Company got involved. The British East India company conquered lands, enacted monopolies, and stimulated trade for much of the world (Pomeranz 2018). Tea entered the European markets as a medicinal product, but by the early 1800s, it became a British obsession (Rappaport 2019). As British demand increased and its imperial dominion expanded, global demand for the leaf went up. Cultivation shifted again to meet this new demand. The tea bush grows in any tropic climate. The colonization of many new tropical British territories gave British businessmen new landscapes and populations to exploit. European export-oriented production favored plantation to mass produce tea (Dey 2021). Plantations favor monocultures which require the near or complete removal of indigenous ecosystems. The harmony of the tea garden was lost to capitalistic gains, but the people working the field also lost as well. The days of plantation workers are long and hard, and often the conditions of their work are brutal (Konings 2012). The larger implications of this system are communities that rely on one dominating company in the area, that could pull their support or funding at any second. This rise of plantations is the beginning of the Plantationocene, where the world started to significantly shift its means of food production to monocultures and mass produced products. Eventually, tea made its way to America. In the eighteenth century, Dutch colonists established a tea ritual in the upper-class households of America. Tea symbolized wealth and tea consumption took on the trappings of class. Teapots, tea trays, and tea tables became symbols of conspicuous consumption. The US “opening” of Japan in 1859, established a stronger connection between Asia and America. When the United States initiated Japan to engage in trade with the West, U.S. tea merchants included Japanese green teas in their trade. According to Jane Pettigrew, by 1880, “47 percent of all tea imported by American tea traders came from Japan” (Pettigrew 2015). During the nineteenth century, consumers incorporated tea into American culture. “Afternoon tea” became popular and was often associated with the upper classes and casual company. (Pettigrew 2015) As the demand for tea in this growing country increased, more efficient methods of cultivation were required. Intercontinental trade supplies most of the tea consumed around the world. In the US, the majority of tea comes from China and India (Micheal 2021). Expansive shipping routes are used every day in order to make this trade possible. Our object of focus, the iced tea tin, was produced by Sprague Warner & Company. Located in Chicago, “this modern manufacturing, warehousing, and merchandising plant occupies the largest building in the world devoted to the production and sale of food supplies” (Chicagology 2003). This food distribution company had sold production in bulk of certain brands, that specialized in canned goods, spices, baking powder, jams and jellies, and more, such as Richelieu, Batavia, and Ferndell, in which Ferndell is the origin brand of our object of focus. That is quite the distance of travel from Chicago to Omaha. It is not certain, but it is possible that tea had made its way from the distribution center of Chicago down to the fields of Omaha through the Union Pacific Railroad. The Union Pacific railroad is a “freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32,000 miles routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans” (Union Pacific). This provides accessibility for connections between the global supply chain, especially when it comes to crucial industries for survival, like the food industry. In fact, the Union Pacific Railroad has built and stationed its headquarters to be in Omaha, Nebraska. It would be reasonable to say that it is possible that the culture of tea had made its way to Omaha from Chicago through the Union Pacific Railroad, for this wide access to industrial transportation introduced other various foods to states around the country. The Union Pacific Railroad allowed for the interconnection of various cultures, which is why tea culture continues to spread around the world today, including Omaha. As the world continues to adapt to the various cultures that communities all around the world have to offer, such as tea culture, this demonstrates that we are still living in the Anthropocene today. With these adaptations, humanity continues to make an impact on the world, on its climate, and on its ecosystems, for they are ever-changing. The introduction of new ideas of cultivation, such as plantation, is what allowed for the thriving of tea culture, especially in Omaha, where there are more tea cafes and shops surfacing as the years pass. Omaha is one of the more prominent cities in Nebraska that have taken a liking to the culture of tea, with other neighboring cities to soon follow. With the urbanization of cities all around, such as Omaha, many are still managing to transition to the customs of the other half of the world that are beneficial, therefore this could indicate that the Anthropocene is now. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Anderson, James. 2009. “China’s Southwestern Silk Road in World History.” University of Illinois Press. Accessed November 2, 2022. https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/J_Anderson_China_2009.pdf Behal, Rana P. “Power Structure, Discipline and Labour in Assam Tea Plantations during Colonial Rule.” India's Labouring Poor, 2007, 143–72. https://doi.org/10.1017/upo9788175968349.008. Chicagology. 2003. “Sprague Warner & Co. Warehouse.” Chicagology. Accessed November 2, 2022. https://chicagology.com/skyscrapers/skyscrapers040/ Dey, Arnab. “Bugs in the Garden: Tea Plantations and Environmental Constraints in Eastern India (Assam), 1840-1910.” Environment and History 21, no. 4 (2015): 537–65. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734015x14414683716235. Dey, Arnab. Tea Environments and Plantation Culture: Imperial Disarray in Eastern India. CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2021. Gunathilaka, R.P. 2016. “The tea industry and a review of its price modeling in major tea producing countries.” Journal of Management and Strategy. Accessed November 1, 2022. doi:10.5430/jms.v7n1p21 Hohenegger, Beatrice. Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West. New York, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. Konings, Piet. Gender and Plantation Labour in Africa: The Story of Tea Pluckers' Struggles in Cameroon. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa groupe d'intiative commune en recherche et publication, 2012. Pettigrew, Jane. 2015. “The Evolution of American Tea Culture.” Teforia. Accessed November 1, 2022. https://medium.com/@teforia/the-evolution-of-american-tea-culture-e4e3d493f7c 9#:~:text=Tea%20was%20introduced%20to%20America,to%20become%20the%20city's%20governor. Pang, Kelly. “The Ancient Tea Horse Road.” Chinese Ancinet Tea-Horse Road, Discover the Ancient Tea Horse Route in China, 4 Jan. 2022, https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/special-report/tea-horse-road/. Perdue, Peter C. “Tea, Cloth, Gold, and Religion: Manchu Sources on Trade Missions from Mongolia to Tibet.” Late Imperial China, vol. 36, no. 2, 2015, pp. 1–22., https://doi.org/10.1353/late.2015.0005. Pomeranz, Kenneth, and Steven Topik. The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy: 1400 to the Present. Routledge, 2018. Published by Statista Research Department, and Jul 27. “Global: Annual Tea Consumption 2012-2025.” Statista, July 27, 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/940102/global-tea-consumption/. Qi, Dan-Hui, Hui-Jun Guo, and Cai-Yu Sheng. “Assessment of Plant Species Diversity of Ancient Tea Garden Communities in Yunnan, Southwest of China.” Agroforestry Systems 87, no. 2 (2012): 465–74. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-012-9567-8. Rappaport, Erika Diane. A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2019. Spengler, Robert N. Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020. S. S, Sumesh, and Nitish Gogoi. “A Journey beyond Colonial History: Coolies in the Making of an ‘Adivasi Identity’ in Assam.” Labor History 62, no. 2 (2021): 134–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2021.1877263. “Tea Plant – Camellia Sinensis.” Science Learning Hub. Accessed December 9, 2022. https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/images/2040-tea-plant-camellia-sinensis. The Tea and Horse Trade with Inner Asia during the Ming.” From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia, 2014, 59–88. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004285293_005. Union Pacific. “Company Overview.” Union Pacific. Accessed November 2, 2022. https://www.up.com/aboutup/corporate_info/uprrover/index.htm Varley, Paul, editor. Tea in Japan. University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Warner, Mason. 1912. “Sprague, Warner & Company, incorporated.” Sprague, Warner & Co. Accessed November 2, 2022. https://archive.org/stream/spraguewarnercom00warn/spraguewarnercom00warn_djvu.txt Xiao, Yan. 2016. “Study on Industrialization Prospects of the Silk Road Tea Culture.” Atlantis Press. Accessed November 1, 2022. doi: 10.2991/msetasse-16.2016.407. Xiong, Yuan, Qianwen Kang, Weiheng Xu, Shaodong Huang, Fei Dai, Leiguang Wang, Ning Lu, and Weili Kou. “The Dynamics of Tea Plantation Encroachment into Forests and Effect on Forest Landscape Pattern during 1991–2021 through Time Series Landsat Images.” Ecological Indicators 141 (2022): 109132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.109132. Xiao, Yan, and Zhaoyu Liao. “Study on Industrialization Prospects of the Silk Road Tea Culture.” Proceedings of the 2016 4th International Conference on Management Science, Education Technology, Arts, Social Science and Economics (msetasse-16), 2016. https://doi.org/10.2991/msetasse-16.2016.407. Zhong, Weimin. 2010. “The roles of tea and opium in early economic globalization: A perspective on China’s crisis in the 19th century.” Frontiers of History in China. Accessed November 2, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11462-010-0004-0 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The Durham Museum Permanent Collection Ferndell plantationocene Sprague Warner and Co. Tea https://steppingintothemap.com/anthropocene/files/original/556a59cecae3bc315aeeed1ae4b8a11a.png 337659af88a133a88ec474b197d978f9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Taming the Landscape Subject The topic of the resource The Early Anthropocene <img src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4740/38752446300_776a102fdd_o.jpg" 100="" width="100% height=" /> Description An account of the resource When did people begin to take control of the global environment? Humans have shaped their local environments for hundreds of thousands of years. As populations increased, their impacts expanded. Two changes greatly accelerated human influence on a global scale: the movement of hunting societies and the development of agriculture. By the end of the last ice age, humans had migrated across much of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Whenever humans appeared, a wave of extinctions followed. In the Americas, large animals such as the Mastodon and Giant Beaver went extinct shortly after the arrival of people. Although scientists debate the origin of these mass extinctions (changing climate likely played a role), hunting was a significant factor. The development of agriculture played an even more important role in global environmental change. People began domesticating plants and animals around the world roughly 12,000 years ago. The stone (“lithic”) tools in our exhibit speak to this dramatic change. Agriculture often required clearing forested lands, irrigating, or fertilizing landscapes to make them suitable for crops. These changes were the foundation for settlement and later the rise of complex civilizations all over the world. Agriculture and hunting continue to reshape environments on a global scale today. The bison in this exhibit represents the consequences of modern overhunting and the single-wheel hoe represents our continued reliance on agriculture. These objects remind us that “taming the landscape” revolutionized societies, but they also produced global environmental consequences. They connect us to a deep past and symbolize a transformation that continues to shape the modern world. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cyclone Seeder Bag Subject The topic of the resource Farming in the nineteenth century was hard work. Agriculture was labor intensive, and farmers often planted seeds by hand. The Cyclone Seeder Bag made seeding easier. The farmer held the device and turned a crank to spread the seeds. This tool was useful in many environments, including in Nebraska. The seeder bag saved farmers time and labor and paved the way for future inventions. In the twentieth century, machine power largely replaced human labor. Mechanization increased crop yields and farm sizes, and it made agriculture a global industry. Overproduction resulted in the exportation of excess crops into the world market. The consequences of these changes varied but included land clearance and loss of plant and animal species. Mechanization improved farmers’ lives but had lasting effects on the environment. Description An account of the resource The late-nineteenth century was a moment of profound transition in the history of Nebraska. This period encompassed the largest migration of people in United States history and included the movement of millions of farmers to the Great Plains (Billington and Ridge, 2001). Over one million people migrated to Nebraska between 1850 and 1890, drawn by the promise of agricultural fertility (Hervey, 1903). About 600,000 people settled in the state in the 1880s alone. As a result of this large migration, 430,000,000 acres were settled, and 225,000,000 acres were cultivated between 1870 and 1900 with those settling in humid eastern Nebraska focusing on arable agriculture (Billington and Ridge, 2001; Hervey, 1903). Nebraska settlers viewed the region as a land of possibility with the potential to double its crop yield under proper cultivation (Hervey, 1903). However, farmers during the nineteenth century were limited by inefficient seeding practices. The existing methods of seeding had been employed since ancient times and consisted of a farmer seeding by hand, dropping seeds from a cloth sack into prepared rows (Conkin, 2008; Lazor, 2013). The invention of the Cyclone Seeder Bag and other mechanical broadcasters reduced the labor necessary for seeding. Though it may seem small, the Cyclone Seeder was part of a much larger mechanization of agriculture during the turn of the twentieth century that had profound social and environmental consequences. The Cyclone Seeder Bag is important in the environmental history of Nebraska because it symbolizes the labor-saving costs of mechanization that led to the globalization of agriculture and regional changes to land clearance trends characteristic of the Anthropocene. Samuel S. Speicher invented the Cyclone Seeder Bag in 1870. Speicher was an Indiana farmer driven by his commitment to optimize agricultural efficiency. Speicher had already devised a hand-full of labor-saving devices similar to the seeder bag intended for his own agricultural use. Realizing the demand of a tool capable of expediting the sowing process, Speicher created a manual seeder device efficient in the consistent disbursement of seeds across a broad region of land. From a little shop on his farm, Speicher manufactured roughly 150 seeder bags per year. Demand was robust, and by 1880, Speicher moved his business to Northern Manchester, Indiana, where he produced 2,000 to 5,000 seeder bags annually. By 1890, he was manufacturing 30,000 to 40,000 seeders per year at his new facility in Urbana, Indiana. Although largely forgotten today, Speicher’s Cyclone Seeder Bag was a common item on American and international farms by the nineteenth century, and one example has found its way to the Durham Museum collection (Weesner, 1914). The object in the Durham Museum collection is representative of the tool. Typically made from heavy duty canvas, the seeder bag portion plays a critical role in the hand powered device. Adjustable straps attached to the seeder bag affix the machine to the user’s shoulder, allowing for a hands-free approach in hauling the seeder bag during the seed dispersal procedure (Lazor, 2013). The seeder bag operates as the seed chamber, which feeds a metering aperture that deposits the seeds into a rotating metal ribbed disk. From there, the seeds are dispersed in a wide fan-shaped arrangement by the operator’s hand, which cranks the metal disk. Figure 1 depicts an image of the Cyclone Seeder Bag from the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The Cyclone Seeder Bag’s configuration and light form allows the operator to maneuver with ease while simultaneously regulating the dispersal of seeds (Larson, 1980). The Cyclone Seeder Bag had various advantages, specifically in small-scale agriculture and land restoration. During the 20th century, the seeder bag evolved into a critical device in the dispersal of seeds among areas in which use of heavy equipment was limited. Additionally, the device was particularly helpful in sowing on uneven landscapes or inclined surfaces, both demanding greater regulation and systematic approach than sowing by hand. Farmers and foresters particularly found this device useful for the equal covering of areas unreachable for heavier equipment, such as tractors (Hardware, 1906). Although the Cyclone Seeder Bag was effective for uneven landscapes, inclined surfaces, and smaller plots, it was not very efficient in sowing large-scale fields. Compared to mechanized seed spreaders mounted on vehicles, the hand-cranked seeder bag approach was more labor-intensive. Likewise, the seeder used a greater number of seeds, which resulted in overapplication of seeds. Despite these disadvantages, the Cyclone Seeder Bag remained an effective tool for seeding needs for when alternative practices proved impractical (Larson, 1980). Although the Cyclone Seeder Bag saved labor relative to hand sowing, it was merely one step in the process of agricultural mechanization. Omaha evolved into an agricultural hotspot for its’ large-scale corn production as it is located in the region referred to as the ‘Corn Belt.’ The extension of farms and mechanization in the Midwest gave farmers the opportunity to maximize crop productivity, allowing Nebraska to become a dominant agricultural region (Edwards, 2004). Devices such as the Cyclone Seeder Bag promoted this growth, further making it more effective in seed dispersal of regions in which other machines were not as efficient. The evolution of agricultural practices in Nebraska developed into a central part of Omaha’s economy, strengthening its regional impact and adjusting to contemporary agricultural equipment and environmental obstacles (Sanford, 2007). As agriculture expansion moved to the West, the open nature of Nebraska’s area permitted the integration of innovative technology. Mechanized devices like the Cyclone Seeder Bag substantially enhanced productivity, allowing agriculture to excel across both the region and the economy. The Cyclone Seeder Bag was one of the first in a long line of innovations that reduced the labor agriculture required of farmers. Mechanical broadcasters like the seeder bag led to innovations such as battery powered rotary spreaders that could be attached to a wagon or trunk and later drills/planters that deposited the seeds directly into a hole made in the ground (Conkin, 2008; Lazor, 2013). The mechanization of agriculture reduced the labor force necessary for seeding and other processes. Energy historian Vaclav Smil has argued that “massive reduction of labor force has been the most consequential economic impact of agricultural mechanization” (Smil, 2021). The replacement of human power with mechanical power saved farmers millions of hours of farm work to produce the same yield of crop (Perelman, 1973). While Speicher’s innovations may seem simple, his motivation to create a labor-saving device paved the way for innovations that have changed agriculture across the world. The labor-saving effects of agricultural mechanization allowed farmers to increase the size of their farms and still input the same amount of labor. Mechanization not only allowed the average American farm to triple in size but also encouraged the restructuring of farm enterprises (Gardner, 2002; Smil, 2021). Figure 2 shows the percent change in the average size of farms in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, including Douglas County and Omaha, during the 20th century (Retallick and Gildersleeve, 1967). As farmers continued to increase the size of their farms, more land was cleared for agricultural use. Mechanization has changed the shape of the agricultural landscape and the transformation of natural ecosystems is an indicator of humans’ impact on the environment (Handbook on the Human Impact, 2021; Smil, 2015). The most common and extensive form of anthropogenic land clearance was the conversion of forests, grasslands, and wetlands into crop fields, which peaked in the early twentieth century. The transformation of several hundred acres of grassland was able to be cleared per family across the Great Plains (Cunfer, 2005; Smil, 2015). While the conversion of land began with the advent of agriculture, land clearance increased exponentially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Figure 3 shows the total amount of land used for cropland in North America from 1600 to 2023 (Ritchie and Roser, 2024). Conversion of grassland to cropland not only reduced the diversity of grass and plant species in the area but also decreased the vegetation needed by animals for habitats and consumption. Large-scale farming systems also led to a decrease in the genetic diversity of the crops planted which is necessary for plant breeding to prevent pests and disease and to adapt to future farming practices and climate change (Committee on Twenty-First Century Systems Agriculture, 2010). The mechanization of agriculture has changed humans’ relationship with the land leading to a farming system that prioritizes high yields over sustainable land use practices. As the size of farms and crop yields increased, American agriculture shifted from more subsistence and small-scale farming to large-scale farming systems rooted in capitalism. Historian Donald Worster argues that nature can be considered capital and that farmers’ use of it for personal advancement and wealth should not just be allowed but encouraged (Worster, 1979). Mechanized agriculture can be explored as a series of inputs and outputs in which the inputs are land, labor, and capital and the outputs are harvested crops and livestock products (Gardner, 2002). Changes in agricultural technology through mechanisms such as reduction of labor have resulted in a decrease of these inputs and/or an increase in outputs. The large-scale agriculture that was made possible by mechanization increased productivity with fewer labor costs. It was thus a “capital-saving innovation” that provided significant economic incentives (Gardner, 2002). Agricultural innovations did not emerge out of scientific and technological progress but out of a need to increase productivity as farms became immersed in the global market. Historian Joshua Brinkman has described this change as the shift to a “rural capitalistic modernity” defined by farmers acting as independent capitalists through the use of technology at a time where mechanization was a symbol of the industrialist American culture (Brinkman, 2024). Mechanization of agriculture was not just a method in which farmers could save labor but became a tool for increasing productivity and profit. As farmers immersed themselves in the world of capitalism and as agricultural productivity increased, there were more crops available for exchange in the global market. Decreases in the amount of labor agriculture required and increases in farm sizes led to an overproduction of crops in the United States. As domestic products became abundant, the preferred method was the export of farm products into the world market (Paarlberg and Paarlberg, 2001). By the late 20th century, the United States used more than 20% of its cropland acreage for exports (Perelman, 1973). Increased crop yields and globalization of agriculture have had significant positive social implications. Higher productivity due to mechanization resulted in the production of more food and lower food prices (Handbook on the Human Impact, 2021). While increased food production, cheaper prices, and exporting of food has helped to feed the planet, it has also left a substantial impact on the environment, both in terms of land clearance and energy usage. Agriculture is thought of as being an energy producing industry, harvesting solar energy from plants, but due to mechanization, it used more petroleum than any other industry by the late 20th century (Perelman, 1973). Many scholars argue that the Anthropocene began during the postwar Great Acceleration as it is marked by dramatic increases in not only population and urbanization but also human impacts on the environment. The mechanization of agriculture parallels the themes of the Great Acceleration as it has led to increases in technological innovations, size of farms, land clearance, crop yields, farm product exports, and energy utilization. Mechanization has transformed agriculture from a local or regional enterprise into a global industry. Increased use of machinery in agriculture and increased productivity resulted in the collectivization and specialization of agriculture and reduced labor needs resulted in urbanization (McNeill, 2021). The mechanization of agriculture is connected to the Anthropocene through its environmental impact and increase in land clearance, but also through the global consequences of agriculture’s emergence into the global, capitalist market. The Cyclone Seeder Bag may come across as a minor chapter in agricultural history, but it marks a defining moment in the transition to mechanized labor. Carried by nineteenth century farmers, the canvas bag represents a broader transformation in agriculture; a shift towards mechanization that redefined human interaction with the environment. The consequences of industrial agriculture, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and land degradation, serve as a reminder of the balance between progress and sustainability. This device played a critical role in shaping Omaha’s agricultural landscape, marking a pivotal period in the Anthropocene when mechanization began to transform the environment. As mechanization advanced, it increased productivity while underscoring the growing human impact on the land, connecting Omaha’s agricultural growth to global shifts in land use and environmental change. The Cyclone Seeder Bag represents more than just a tool; it exemplifies how small innovations ripple through history, influencing the environment, economies, and societies. 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