Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

While amber’s deep-time feature often underpins its contemporary value – from jewellery to paleontological specimen, focusing on amber from Fushun in northeastern China, the paper explores how a much shorter human history may get registered in amber in ways that are both social and material.

Paper long abstract

Appreciated as “nature’s time capsule”, amber is known for its capacity to reveal deep ecological pasts. While this deep-time feature often underpins its contemporary value – from precious jewellery to vital paleontological specimen, this paper looks at how a much shorter human history may get registered in amber in ways that are both social and material. Specifically, it focuses on Eocene amber from Fushun in northeastern China, where amber crafting and trade date back to the early 1900s. Locally known as 煤黄 (“coal yellow”), amber extraction and circulation in Fushun are closely intertwined with histories of Japanese occupation, coal mining, and (post-) socialist economic development. While amber is commonly categorised by colour, these layered histories produce social labels that simultaneously have material relevance. For instance, “Japanese-returned amber”, crafted in a characteristic style, evokes the history of Japanese occupation when it was sold to Japanese tourists in Fushun; it is also recognised and appreciated for the distinctive sheen it has acquired over time. Local traders differentiate between “old Fushun amber,” extracted directly from the coal mine, and “new” amber collected from coal waste; exposed to oxygen, coal waste generates heat that alters amber materially. Precisely, that amber is unstable provides room for these more-than-human histories to be inscribed. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in Fushun in 2025, this paper seeks to discuss how the social may interact with the geological through ways that are material.