Complete a timeline of “discovery” and locations of Neolithic caves containing images of mammoths. Where located? When “found”? When and how researched? Were they known to locals before being studied by specialists? Note any associated publications. Note time, location, nature of art. What other animals/objects/people depicted?

End goal: to plot against the timeline of mammoth soft tissue discoveries, in order to speak to the likely impact of preserved hair/wool.

Using the images already collected as a starting point (see relevant Dropbox folder), track down any and all replicas of Tilesius’s original drawing of the Adams mammoth. Where was it reproduced? In what media? For what audiences?

Suggested starting points: geology and zoology textbooks. Keyword searching in BHL. Contextual research on the SS Corbin and its routes along the Alaska coast.

Who/what/where/when/how: times, dates and locations of key mineral discoveries (“rushes”) in Alaska & Yukon? Who were the key players? How did they move around the landscape (eg. What kind of boats? Trains? Roads? Etc) What were the major corporations involved? How soon were palaeontologists and fossil hunters involved? What are the most relevant secondary sources?

What is the current consensus around the causes of the extinction of mammoths? What role is believed to have been played by early homo sapiens? When did this take place? Where, largely? What else is happening in the world at this time (ie., what is the context)? Who produces/produced this consensus - what historians/scientists/organizations/institutions, etc?

Suggested starting points: scientific literature, prehistoric environmental histories, etc.

What do mammoths, especially frozen mammoths, mean to us? How are they represented in contemporary images, cultural products, art objects, etc.? Who is writing/thinking/creating with and around mammoths? Is the idea of the frozen mammoth different across cultures? If so, how so?

When did fossil hunters first start hunting around the Yukon/Northwest Territories, and what were they looking for? Where did they come from (especially US/Europeans)? What Indigenous peoples did they encounter, and where/what are the records of these encounters? Where these expeditions considered “successful”?

Suggested starting points: Annual reports of major museums or scientific associations (Royal Academy, British Museum, French Academy of Scientists etc.), secondary literature.

How did the discovery for frozen woolly mammoths, and the nascent discourses around deep time and extinction disrupt/affect religious conceptions of time and human history? How did various religious groups or organizations grapple with or address the mammoth? What did the mammoth mean to them?

Suggested starting points: newsletters/newspapers of religious groups or institutions, sermons, scholarly theological journals of the 19th century, etc.

Henry Ward purchased, and then replicated, a replica mammoth in the 1870s. We’re tracking the “life” or “lives” of these mammoths. Where did they go? How were they transported? How did the public respond to them?