This is the abstract for a talk I gave at the 2023 Commons in Space conference. It was a pre-recorded video, and you can watch it below. I've been thinking about shadows for a long time. I first posted about them in 2014!
The protection of planetary environments has historically focused on preventing terrestrial impacts on potential life. Human presence in the solar system beyond Earth has been so minimal to date that greater impacts on landscapes or ‘natural’ values have not been a major consideration. However, in the coming decade, Earth’s Moon looks set to be the location of increased scientific exploration, possible settlements, and even industrial operations, centred on the polar water ice in the Permanently Shadowed Regions. As concepts of environment in space are poorly developed, the traditional characterization of airless worlds as ‘dead’ has prevented a nuanced understanding of their landscape values.
The Moon is a unique case as an airless world with substantial human presence. In the past, human material on the Moon has been classified as junk or trash, setting up an opposition where active ‘culture’ intruded on passive ‘nature’. Over two decades of space archaeology research has resurrected these places as significant heritage and a complex cultural landscape. But the traditional division between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ no longer serves us well. I argue that these discarded human materials are a dynamic part of a far-from-passive environment. They are components of an abiotic ecology which includes shadows, dust, light, colour, radiation and cosmic interactions. In the coming lunar industrial age, it is imperative to develop new ways of assessing landscape values that do not rely on a terrestrial deficit model and acknowledge the entanglement of nature and culture.