An Index of Chomps

This publication presents a selection from a growing collection of 52 beaver-gnawed wood shavings gathered in Pennsylvania and Michigan for Marianne Hoffmeister Castro’s project A Study of Beaverness. Drawing on field research, the publication closely attends to their shapes, textures, and gnaw marks, considering what these material traces reveal about the beaver’s gestures and the environments they inhabit.

The broader project explores a beaver-centered imaginary and the animal’s historical encounters with humans across time, places, and hemispheres.

Co-published with the Observatory of Radical Empathies (ORE).