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Decolonising Geology Collections: Why Rocks Are Not as Neutral as They Seem

  • Writer: Livi Adu
    Livi Adu
  • Mar 19
  • 12 min read

Updated: Apr 6

Introduction:

Geology is often framed as objective, neutral, and apolitical*, but its history is deeply tied to exploitation, colonialism*, and the politics of resource control. That illusion of neutrality* starts to fall apart as soon as we ask who gathered geological knowledge, where they gathered it, who benefited, and what was left out.


I came to this from two directions: first as a geology student, and later as a museum professional. When I studied geology at university, I was taught to think about rocks, deep time, and Earth processes, but not to think critically enough about how geological knowledge and specimens were collected, or how closely the discipline has been tied to Colonialism and extraction*.  It was only through museum work that those connections became impossible to ignore.


That shift has stayed with me. The more I read, the harder it becomes to see geology, or geology collections, as separate from the systems of power that shaped them.

This blog is not about one museum or one project. It is a wider provocation:


-If geology has helped shape how land, resources, and knowledge were claimed, classified, and controlled, what does it mean to start questioning that legacy now?


Museum wooden drawers with rock samples and labels in a geology collection. Visible label shows numbers 87931-87943. on a wooden table background.
Sedgewick museum collections draw of Ghanian rock specimens collected during British colonial expansion of 'the Gold Coast'



Note for the reader:

You’ll see some terms in bold with an asterisk* throughout this post. I’ve added short definitions at the end for terms that can be confusing or are used in different ways.



What does decolonising geology collections mean?

Decolonisation* can be an intimidating word, especially in science. It is often misunderstood as being about deleting history, rejecting science, or simply adding a few more diverse names to a reading list. It is much bigger than that.


In this context, I am using decolonisation to mean questioning, challenging, and critiquing the power structures that have shaped geology, museums, and the stories they tell. It means asking whose knowledge has been treated as authoritative, whose labour and land made geological collections possible, and whose histories have been left out. The Museums Association describes decolonising as a process of reimagining how museums work, who they work with, and what they value, with the aim of rebalancing power and representation.


For geology, that matters because the discipline did not develop in a vacuum. In Geology Uprooted! (2022), Krause, Mogk, and Salim make the point that geology was formed within colonial systems and continues to be shaped by those legacies today. Decolonising geology is therefore not about throwing away scientific knowledge. It is about widening the frame: being honest about how that knowledge was produced, recognising other ways of knowing the Earth, and making the discipline more open, relevant, and accountable.


It is also not just about collections. Yes, museum specimens matter. So do catalogues, labels, and interpretation. But decolonisation also reaches into teaching, fieldwork, research culture, and the assumptions geology still carries about what counts as proper knowledge. Done well, it is not a superficial act of diversification. It is a deeper, more collaborative process of challenge, repair, and change.


That is why this conversation matters beyond museums. Decolonising geology collections is one entry point, but the bigger question is what kind of discipline geology wants to be now.


Layered stone slab with geological labels set on grassy hillside under a blue sky at the Knockan Crag National Nature Reserve. Text includes rock names and "1000 million years old."
A fieldwork photo I took from Knockan Crag National Nature Reserve, Scotland in 2015

How is Geology an extractive colonial tool?

It is easy to think of geology as a science of observation: rocks, layers, fossils, minerals, maps. But geology did not grow in a neutral space of curiosity. It grew alongside and resourced colonial expansion.


Geological knowledge was used to map mineral wealth, judge the economic value of land, and support colonial expansion. Rocks were not only studied for scientific interest. They were also studied because they could generate profit, fuel extraction, and strengthen colonial control. In the British Empire*, mineral wealth was considered so important that military, naval, and commercial officers were trained to make scientific observations, while materials from the colonies were displayed in Museums across Britain. Below is a gallery of snippets from a 1920's handbook summarising historical and economic information required for the British Foreign Office to negotiate peace with the Gold Coast, now present-day Ghana.



This is where geological surveys matter. Across the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, surveys helped identify what land could yield, where resources could be found, and how territories might be used. Official British geological surveys were established across colonial territories, making it very hard to argue that geology developed separately from colonial ambition. In many places, local guides and Indigenous knowledge made that work possible, but those contributions were often erased, rewritten, or absorbed into European scientific authority and white supremacist pseudoscience*. Some of the most celebrated geologists in history were also involved in exploratory surveys that supported colonial expansion, often backed by the state, the military, or imperial institutions.


This is one of the reasons the language of neutrality feels so misleading. Geology may present itself as objective, but objectivity has often been used to smooth over the politics of who had the power to travel, map, extract, name, and claim. Das and Lowe (2018) make a similar point about natural history collections in general, arguing that these collections are shaped as much by silence as by what is actually recorded.


Museums inherited that logic. Specimens often entered collections as neat scientific facts: a rock type, a place, a collector, a date. But that format leaves a lot unsaid. Gelsthorpe (2024) notes that geology collections were often built “in the name of science” while overlooking who was involved in collecting objects and ignoring their colonial histories.


This is where geology collections become especially revealing. A specimen label may record the rock type, place, and collector, but still say nothing about whose land it came from, what labour made its removal possible, or what local and Indigenous knowledge was ignored in the process.


That is not a neutral gap.


It is part of how colonial science worked:

turning land into data,

material into property,

and extraction into knowledge.


So when people ask why geology collections need decolonising, I think this is where the answer starts. Not because geology is uniquely guilty, but because it has been unusually protected by the idea that science sits outside history. It does not. And until geology is willing to name how closely it has been tied to extraction and colonialism, neutrality will remain more of a shield than a truth.




What intersectional barriers still impact geoscience and museum work?


If geology is not neutral, then neither are the spaces built around it.


The question is not only how rocks were collected, named, and displayed. It is also who gets to study them, care for them, interpret them, and feel that they belong in the room.


Decolonising geology has to include that human question too.


The inequalities shaped by geology’s history are not only visible in collections. They are also visible in who gets to belong within the discipline. Research published in Nature Geoscience (Dowey et al., 2021) has identified that the racial diversity crisis in UK geoscience goes far beyond simple questions of representation. It is shaped by deeper structural issues, including exclusionary department cultures, the cost and culture of fieldwork, racial harassment, and the extra labour often placed on minoritised staff and students. The authors also make clear that these barriers are often intersectional, especially in field-based settings.


That matters because geology has often been imagined in quite a narrow way: white, male, able-bodied, outdoorsy, and culturally untroubled by where fieldwork happens or how knowledge is extracted from a place. James and Meadows push this further in Decolonising the Geosciences (2022), showing how colonial legacies still shape curriculum, fieldwork, language, and assumptions about what an Earth scientist looks like. Their point is not that geology should stop being scientific. It is that geology has been far too comfortable treating one way of knowing as universal.


The disability lens matters here too.


Disability-focused work in Earth science highlights something that is often missed: fieldwork has long been shaped by ideas of exploration, endurance, and extraction, and those same values can make the discipline inaccessible in the present. That affects disabled people, but it also affects anyone pushed to the margins by the idea that a “real” geologist must move, work, and experience the world in one narrow way.


The Museums Association also reminds us that decolonising work is intersectional by nature, and that it must challenge structural inequalities across race, gender, class, disability, sexuality, and other forms of exclusion. It also points out the emotional and practical burden often placed on marginalised staff when institutions fail to support this work properly.


This is also where catalogues and databases quietly come back into the picture. Even when a museum record looks tidy and factual, it can still reflect the same exclusions as the discipline around it. What gets recorded, what gets prioritised, and what gets left blank are never purely technical choices. They tell us something about whose knowledge matters and whose experience has been treated as optional.


So when I think about decolonising geology, I do not just think about colonial specimens or difficult histories. I also think about belonging.

Who is geology for?

Who is missing?

And what would have to change for the discipline and the sector to feel less extractive, less exclusive, and more accountable to the people they claim to serve?


Hand touching a large gray rock on a table. Text reads: Typical middle crust fold in prograde metamorphic. Background has rock samples.
Geology study reference photo I took while at the University of Leeds. I would often use my hand for scale.

What could repair, imagination, and co-created futures look like?

If colonialism was built on exploitation and extraction, then decolonisation has to be about more than critique. It also has to be about repair.


For me, this is where the conversation becomes most hopeful. Repair is not just about naming harm or correcting a label. It is about asking:

what geology could look like if it was shaped by care, collaboration, and equity rather than distance, authority, and control.


The Decolonial Centre describes decolonisation as an ongoing process rather than a fixed endpoint, which feels important here. It reminds us that this work is not about finding a perfect solution. It is about committing to doing things differently.


Case study: University of Bristol and making colonial histories visible


In 2022, the University of Bristol reviewed, catalogued, and photographed more than 5,000 specimens, revealing just how deeply the mineral collection was shaped by the British Empire and how little had been done to address that history before. This work helped make the archives and collections more accessible to cultures of origin and source communities, while also showing how much institutional silence had built up over time.  I like how in this project, Bristol demonstrates repair as something practical and structural. It is not only about a statement of intent. It is about reviewing records, making patterns visible, and creating the conditions for different conversations to happen.


Case study: Sensational Museum and disability gain

Another powerful example comes from the Sensational Museum. I  have written about it in more detail in an earlier blog post, but what matters in this context is its challenge to narrow, technical ways of understanding collections. By centring sensory experience, access, and disability-led thinking, it opens up a more human way of engaging with objects. In a geology context, that matters because it asks what might happen if rocks and specimens were understood not only through classification, but also through feeling, memory, relationship, and embodied experience.


Case study: Decolonising Earth Science and rethinking what counts as knowledge


A really strong example of this wider shift is the Decolonising Earth Science project. What I like about it is that it does not just focus on hidden histories as an add-on. It is trying to show how Earth Science itself was built on forms of unrecognised knowledge, including the expertise of local guides and geologists who made colonial surveys possible, and how those histories continue to shape who is included in the discipline today. The project also links this directly to curriculum change and inclusive teaching, which makes it a good example of how decolonisation can move beyond collections and into the foundations of the discipline itself.


Repair is not a side note to decolonisation.

It IS the work.


It can look like revisiting specimen records, making colonial histories more visible, widening access, changing teaching and fieldwork culture, and creating more space for different kinds of knowledge and expertise.


That does not make geology less rigorous. If anything, it makes it more accountable.

And that is the future I am most interested in: one where geology is not only better at describing the Earth, but better at recognising the people, histories, and power structures bound up within it.


Final reflections

Geology is not as neutral as it is made to seem.


Beneath the language of objectivity sits a history tied to extraction, colonialism, and the control of land, labour, and resources. Those histories do not only live in the past. They continue to shape geology collections, museum interpretation, research culture, teaching, fieldwork, and ideas about who belongs within the discipline.


Looking back on my time studying geology, it was taught as method and fact, not as a discipline shaped by extraction and colonialism. I do not say that to dismiss geology. I am still deeply interested in understanding the earth, from vast landscapes to the smallest mineral details; perhaps that is why all of this matters to me.


But the more I have read, the harder it has become to ignore how geology is misrepresented as sitting outside politics, social history, and questions of power. We need to start asking different questions:

not only what a specimen is,

but how it was acquired?


not only what knowledge a collection holds,

but whose knowledge made it possible?


and not only what has been recorded,

but what has been left out?


Decolonising geology is about more than pointing out harm. It means questioning, challenging, and critiquing the power structures that shaped the discipline, while also thinking seriously about repair. That includes making colonial influence more visible, confronting contemporary exclusion, and creating more space for different kinds of knowledge, experience, and authority. This is an opportunity for us to be honest about the histories geology carries, the exclusions it still reproduces, and to rethink what counts as knowledge, authority, and care.


If geology helped shape extractive ways of understanding the Earth, then it also has the potential to shape something more equitable, accountable, and inclusive.


geology students in helmets explore rocky cliffs and caves. The landscape is vast, with layered rock formations and a cloudy sky, creating a rugged atmosphere.
One of my fieldwork photos from Broad Haven beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Your Call to Action - What Now?


If you work in geology, geoscience education, or museums, consider this an invitation to:


  • Reflect on how geology has been framed in your own learning, teaching, or practice.

  • Question what your collections, records, fieldwork, or curriculum is made visible, and what it is hidden.

  • Share this post and start conversations about what a more equitable, accountable, and inclusive earth sciences could look like.




Not interested in or connected with politics, or not connected to any political party.


A worldwide system of dependencies, including colonies, protectorates, and other territories, brought under the sovereignty of the British crown and government over several centuries.


Control by one country over another and its economy, or support for such control.


A long-term process that seeks to recognise the integral role of empire in museums from their creation to the present day, and that requires a reappraisal of institutions, their history, and colonial structures across all areas of work.


Equity (equitable):

Social Equity refers to fair treatment that recognises and addresses unequal starting points shaped by social, economic, and structural disadvantage. Rather than treating everyone the same, it focuses on reducing exclusion and inequality by centring dignity, access, and the inclusion of diverse lived experiences (particularly those of communities who have been historically marginalised).


The process of removing or obtaining something, especially from beneath the ground or from inside something else


The state of not supporting either side in a disagreement, competition, or war; independence and impartiality.


(white supremacist pseudoscience):

Scientific racism refers to the misuse of scientific methods and ideas to justify racial hierarchy and discrimination. Emerging in the nineteenth century, it drew on Enlightenment thinking around classification and rationality to categorise human difference in ways that falsely positioned whiteness as superior and civilisation as exclusively white.


White supremacy describes the systems and structures that sustain white dominance by positioning whiteness as the norm. These systems are upheld through everyday attitudes, institutional practices, and policies (often without explicit intent). Upholding white supremacy does not require extremist beliefs; it can occur through ordinary, unexamined participation in existing systems.


Links and References:  



Primary sources

  • Bowen, E. (1747) A new & accurate map of Negroland and the adjacent countries: also upper Guinea, showing the principle European settlements & distinguishing wch. belong to England, Denmark, Holland & c: the sea of the rivers being drawn from surveys & the best modern maps and charts, & regulated by astron. observns. [London?: Emanuel Bowen, ?] [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018585377/.    

  • Great Britain. Foreign Office. Historical Section. (1920) Gold Coast. London, H.M. Stationery off. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/a22000950/.                                                             


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