THE PERSISTENCE OF CELESTIAL IMPACTS: EXPERIMENTING WITH PALEOLITHIC MINERALS AND THE LINGERING HUMAN COSTS OF UNEXPLODED ORDINANCES THROUGHOUT SOUTHEAST ASIA.

In development with Dr Gabrielle Adamik at the University of Sydney, this work focuses on the material remnants and ecological impacts of bombs left in the landscape.

About 790,000 years ago, a meteor impact in mainland Southeast Asia dispersed black molten silica (known as tektites) across the Indo-Pacific; stretching from Southern China to Southern Australia and from Papua to Madagascar. This impact is known scientifically as the Austronesian Strewnfield. It is the largest known meteor tektite dispersal event to date, covering over 30% of the earth’s surface.

Scientists have still been unable to locate the site of the meteor impact, despite the cataclysmic scale of the event and efforts to map the huge strewnfield. There is recent archeological evidence suggesting that Neolithic human ancestors living in Northern Vietnam and Southern China had managed to not only survive the meteor impact itself, but also thrived in the fires that burned as molten rocks rained back to earth. A significant quantity of stonetools and human-made minerals have been excavated immediately in the aftermath of this meteor burnout. It is theorised that the meteor event had unexpectedly changed the landscape to benefit these early human ancestors, exposing rocks and minerals for toolmaking, and promoting new grassland growth once the fires had died down.

Considering how Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia still remain the most heavily cratered landscapes left with unexploded bombs from the American War, these ancient events carry the resonance of ongoing struggles for life and survival.

With tons of unexploded bombs and mines still embedded in the landscape, It is important to think about the co-mingling of both the recent time and deep time impacts of the region’s cosmic impacts; how they shaped the lives of our human ancestors and communities today as war and violence continue to affect people and their homelands.

Collecting a range of Tektites, James is working with the University of Sydney to experiment with molten recycled glass and crystal and ancient Tektite glass. Although both are essentially composed of silica and small amounts of other chemical impurities, the absence of water and gas in the tektites resists the predictable characteristics of mass-manufactured and human-made glass. In the process of melting and fusing them together, there is a form of material resistance that continues to resonate and charges these materials with unpredictable reckoning and beauty at the most elemental level.