CFP: Mineral Expertise: The Rules of Knowing Earthly Matter in the Early Modern World

 CFP: Mineral Expertise: The Rules of Knowing Earthly Matter in the Early Modern World - Bologna (Italy), 04.02.2027 - 06.02.2027, Deadline: 10.07.2026

Minerals have been extracted as resources, traded as commodities, ingested as medicine, and examined for knowledge across the early modern world. Their lifecycle was structured by mineral expertise rooted in tradition and trained bodies – a bezoar pulverised by a town apothecary, ore assayed by a company metallurgist, gemstones authenticated by a court jeweller. Minerals were key to medicine, metallurgy, alchemy and magic and thus a site to negotiate and legitimate forms of knowledge. Precisely because so much was at stake – both the value of objects and the reputation of people – mineral expertise was subject to scrutiny by peers and official regulation.

A central concern of the workshop is to critically assess the concept of expertise. Before the emergence of modern credentialing and professional licensing, claims to mineral knowledge were fluid and contested. We therefore approach expertise as a context-dependent process of negotiation and legitimation. It emerged when actors combined specialised skills with claims to generalisable knowledge and obtained some form of formal acknowledgment for it. Yet we are interested not only in those who have come to be recognised as experts, but in the broader topography of knowledge within which such recognition was negotiated. Which empirical practices cut across distinctions of status, and which ones did not? How did expertise relate to shared knowledge (common knowledge, the period eye, a well-indexed archive)? What distinguished experts from experienced state officials, skilled artisans, or shrewd market-goers? What were the rules of knowing earthly matter in the early modern world?

This workshop aims to compare mineral expertise from different angles. We are interested in contributions from historians of science, technology and medicine, economic historians, archaeologists and archaeometallurgists working on the period between c.1450 and c.1850 CE. By using minerals as a boundary object both of historical actors and historians who study them, we aim for a richer account of how early modern people engaged the mineral world. We aim for a history of mineral expertise that is attentive to local practices and alert to the broader structures of knowledge/power and value-making in which these practices were embedded.

The workshop will take place on 4-6 February, 2027 at the University of Bologna. We aim to discuss approximately 12 pre-circulated article-length papers (6.000–8.000 words) over two days. Decisions regarding the publication of the papers in a special issue will be made after the workshop. We welcome creative contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following questions:

What was mineral knowledge?

- What distinguished expertise in minerals from other kinds of earth-related knowledge (e.g. that of a farmer) and expertise in other materials (e.g. plant matter)? How were historical distinctions asserted, contested, and institutionalised?

- How was expertise valorised and employed in sites of labour — the mine, the home,the office, the laboratory, the museum? How did artisanal or vernacular knowledge validate or contradict expertise?

- How was expertise valorised and employed in imperial expansion and long-distance trade? How did different traditions of mineral knowledge interact or clash, adapt or become marginalised in contexts of empire and colonisation?

- When did specialist knowledge matter decisively? When did social networks, local experience, or consensus prove equally or more powerful?

How was mineral knowledge regulated?

- How did legal and bureaucratic frameworks — testing sites, law courts, guilds, tax regimes — shape the conditions under which expertise was recognised and gain public authority?

- What role did archives, records, and formal procedures play in transforming knowledge into expertise, or expertise into public information? What do administrative sources reveal — and conceal — about the range of actors involved in the making of mineral expertise?

- How were conflicts over mineral expertise adjudicated, and what do such disputes reveal about competing epistemologies and claims to authority?

- Which moral values were invoked in policies seeking to regulate medical, commercial, and occupational practice (e.g. peace, cosmic order, the common good, thrift, charity, godliness, justice)? Whom did experts claim to serve – and whom did they actually serve – when they worked in the ambiance of the state?

We welcome papers from all parts of the world and approaches that engage with cross-cultural encounters and wide-ranging knowledge exchange, as well as those that drill deep into a specific place and time. Since early modern categories were fluid and diverse, we are interested in both objects recognized as “minerals” today and more expansive understandings or boundary cases.

The workshop is co-organized by Monica Azzolini, Sebastian Felten and Sarah Seinitzer, as a collaboration between the SCARCE project (ERC StG, Grant number 101076422) and the Department of Philosophy (History of Science) at the University of Bologna. Potential contributors should send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a 200 word bio to scarce.geschichte@univie.ac.at by 10 July 2026. Limited funding is available to cover travel and accommodation in Bologna. Please indicate if you have other funding sources to cover your travel expenses.