Works > The Rock Cycle (from stromatolites to diamonds)

This new constellation brings fossils, new grown cave objects, Scottish marble and Herkimer Diamonds (ancient quartz crystals from upstate New York) together to foster unexpected connections between early life forms and potential deep time futures. 

When we went to the quarry in Ledmore, Simon explained that around 535 million years ago, the marble here mostly began as stromatolite-bearing limestone. Stromatolites are among the first traces of organic life on earth. They are the reason we can breathe. The stromatolites died, were crushed, compressed, turned into limestone and cooked by new rock that ground its way through fissures in the dolostone (a near relation of limestone), and marble occurred. Across the Atlantic in upstate New York, a similar process happened, and then Herkimer Diamonds grew in pockets in the dolostone. Now, different branches of this carbonate family are meeting. We are part of this conglomerate family too – a deep time calcium carbonate family tree stretching from stromatolites all the way to our teeth and bones. A different form of generational understanding. 

We are all chimeras. There are cells from our grandmothers, uncles, brothers, sisters and mothers living inside of all of us. But can we go further – do we have memories of the material we are made of (we are made of star stuff…) Of limestone and tuff, of calcium carbonate and coral, of ammonites. What about cells, about atoms, about mountains? Of mineral memories? I am sure this is not scientifically accurate, but could it be something else accurate, a possibility?

Mountains and rocks, which remind us they are the product of the living, can become reanimated again, an infinite source of narratives, deeply embedded in our connected identities. Can looking more closely at our geologic neighbours help us to connect in felt, material and corporeal ways to our place in the deep time story, help us care about our deep time family?