Paleoethnobotany (Other Keyword)
51-75 (461 Records)
Paleoethnobotany, while not a nascent field, is still an underutilized research framework in Pacific Northwest (PNW) archaeology. But increasingly, PNW projects have incorporated macrobotanical analyses as a precursor to radiocarbon dating. Analysts provide taxonomic identifications of woody fuel remains and assist in selecting fragments from short-lived genera that will mitigate the old wood effect, thereby increasing the accuracy of dates. This paper assesses the utility of an anthracological...
Botanical Resources in Ancient Costa Rican Cloud Forests (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoethnobotanical investigations at domestic contexts in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in a tropical montane cloud forest setting. Macrobotanical remains recovered through horizontal excavations of household structures at G-995 La Chiripa and G-164 Sitio Bolivar and flotation of soil...
Bread, Apples, and Cereal Grains: Analyzing a Collection of Carbonized Food from Robenhausen, Switzerland (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of research on a collection of food from Robenhausen, a lake-dwelling site southeast of Zurich. These specimens are part of a larger collection that was recovered in the late 19th century and is housed at the Milwaukee Public Museum. The material includes thirteen bread fragments, seventy-five apple pieces, and thousands of...
Bridging the Divides at Azoria: Environmental Archaeology at an Archaic Greek City (2018)
Excavations at the Archaic (7th-6th centuries B.C.) city of Azoria on Crete demonstrate the value of intensive environmental archaeology for understanding an historical Greek context. Texts document the important role of food and dining to ancient religion and politics; however, ancient authors presented a normative picture and excluded details they assumed were common knowledge. Studying plant and animal remains can "ground-truth" ancient sources on foodways and provide contextual nuances not...
Capturing the Fragrance of Ancient Copan Rituals: Floral Remains from Maya Tombs and Temples (2018)
Pollen analysis of Classic-period temple and tomb spaces in Copan’s Acropolis revealed a range of plants important to ancient Maya ritual practice. Some of these species were not represented in macroremains in ritual or household contexts. Scholars have described temple spaces as thick with the odor of burned offerings and copal, but added to this would also have been the fresh and heady fragrance of blooming buds and greenery, adding a fecund perfume to the areas of ritual supplication. These...
Carbonized Wood Remains from the Matacanela Site, Veracruz, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper describes the carbonized wood remains recovered from fifty-five heavy fractions of flotation from seven units and fifty light fractions of flotation from six units collected during the excavations of the Matacanela Site in Veracruz, Mexico. Environmental comparisons are...
Catawba Foodways at Old Town: Loss and Discard of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (2016)
This paper analyzes botanical remains recovered at the Old Town site, a late 18th century occupation of the Catawba Nation, and integrates those data with faunal and ceramic analysis along with ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources to describe Catawba foodways. The Old Town occupation was defined by wars and a major epidemic, and was one of the places where the devastated Catawba peoples reformed and reconstituted their new identity. I examine the foodways at Old Town as part of the changing...
Ceremonial and Psychotropic Plants of the Tiwanaku (AD 500-1000): New Evidence for Erythroxylum Coca and Anadenanthera Colubrina from the Omo Temple in Moquegua, Peru. (2017)
The consumption of psychotropic substances is a ceremonial practice widespread worldwide since antiquity, however, archaeological evidence for the role of plants in rituals is scarce and interpretations are mostly derived from ethnographies and iconography. Among other methods of analysis, Paleoethnobotany is one of the most indicated for the finding of micro and macro remains involved in ceremonies. This paper presents the results of a Paleoethnobotanical analysis conducted at the site of Omo...
Challenges and Prospects of Richness and Diversity Measures in Paleoethnobotany (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The measurement of the richness and diversity of archaeological plant remains recovered from sites is an essential, if not always explicitly recognized, aspect of paleoethnobotanical practice and interpretation. The range of different recovered plant taxa can be indicative of routes of taphonomic entry, diet breadth, local responses to...
Change and Continuity in Agricultural Production in Iraqi Kurdistan, ca. 4000 BCE–1000 CE (2018)
The archaeological site of Kani Shaie is a small (<3ha) tell site located in Iraqi Kurdistan not far from contemporary Sulaymaniyah. Archaeological evidence as well as radiocarbon dates procured from excavations at the site indicate in-habitation from at least 3500 BCE until the Middle Islamic period, ca. 1400 CE. Excavations in 2015 and especially 2016 included a substantial archaeobotanical sampling component, which entailed the sampling of every archaeological deposit and the subsequent...
Changes Palates and Resources: Modeling Diachronic Plant Use in Prehistoric California (2015)
Despite considerable diversity in plant communities across coastal and inland California, the region’s hunter-gatherers often have been viewed as having broadly similar plant resource orientation. This paper reassess this perspective by explicitly examining spatial and temporal variation in plant use west of the Sierra Nevada. In doing so, the study capitalized on a growing body of paleoethnobotanical data to explore similarities and differences in plant food resource emphasis across six main...
Changing Food Practices at Tequendama, Aguazuque, and Zipacon (Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia) (2016)
The process of domestication has interested archaeologists working in the Andes for decades but for many years problems of preservation and access to certain analyses have caused a lag in the recovery of concrete evidence. Although, previous research carried out in the 1970’s and 1980’s at the preceramic sites of Tequendama, Aguazuque, and Zipacon on the altiplano of the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia yielded a wealth of paleoenvironmental, tool use, and faunal data, few botanical remains were...
Changing Patterns of Plant Use at Formative and Classic Period Matacanela (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Olmec Manifestations and Ongoing Societal Transformations in the Tuxtlas Uplands: A View from Matacanela" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although there has been much speculation about the nature of agriculture along the Formative and Classic period Gulf Coast of Mexico, the local and regional subsistence economies of these periods remain poorly understood, particularly for Classic-period sites. In this paper, we...
Changing Plant Economies and Diverse Plant Practices at Piedras Negras (2018)
Botanical residues recovered from the Piedras Negras kingdom have yielded rich information about activities and economies of ancient inhabitants. Data for this paper were derived from large-scale excavations targeting Classic Period craft production areas, defensive features, and dwellings. Evidence of agricultural practices as well as the collection of wild and fallow-dwelling plants has been revealed through charred seeds and other botanical residues. The recovered archaeobotanical remains...
Chapter Thirteen: Palynology of Picacho Reservoir, Arizona (1986)
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The Character of Carbonized Rice in Hunan Archaeological Site (2018)
Based on the comprehensive analysis of grain shape and embryos of carbonized rice from archaeological sites, the author draws conclusions as follows: a. There is a difference in shape of spikelet base between cultivated rice and wild rice, but it is difficult to make comparable measurements. Therefore, it is possible to identify rice by using the characteristics of the spikelet base based on one’s experience, but it is difficult to make comparisons between different researchers. b. According to...
Charcoal Identification as Means of Central California Landscape Reconstruction (2015)
The purpose of my paper is to present a paleoethnobotanical study of a late prehistoric Central California site (located in Sonoma County) that reconstructs the pre-contact landscape via the identification of wood charcoal remains. The analysis of charcoal and the low-impact paleoethnobotancial methodologies utilized in this study provide the basis for generating hypotheses about how Native peoples interacted with the local environment while also considering how the landscape may have changed...
Classic Maya Food Systems and the Sociality of Diet in the Usumacinta Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya utilized a range of landscape modifications for agricultural production, including terraces and raised fields. These agricultural strategies were tied into food systems that also included taxation and tribute, all significant components of a political economy that may have reflected autonomy, exploitation, or both. Using a paleoethnobotanical...
Climate Change and Polyculture Agroforestry Systems: Examples from Amazonian Dark Earths (2018)
In this presentation, we discuss pre-Columbian Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE) polyculture agroforestry systems and its implications for management and conservation efforts on Amazonian sustainable futures under current threat from climate change and development. We present and compare new multi-proxy paleoclimate, palaeoecological and archaeobotanical data from two mid to late Holocene records of land use history of ADE in Santarem (Lower Amazon) and the Itenez Forest Reserve (SW Amazonia). Our data...
Clues to Cacao from the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon (2015)
Genetic studies suggest a single domestication event for cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in the Upper Amazon of southeastern Ecuador and northeastern Peru and then transported by humans northwards to Central America and Mexico. As such, we should expect to find the earliest archaeological evidence of cacao use in the tropical forests of South America. This paper presents starch granule evidence for the use of cacao dating to 3500-3300 Cal BC from the Santa Ana - La Florida site in the Upper Amazon of...
Coastal Continuity on the Wampanoag Landscape: Recent Analyses of the Woodland Period Occupation at the Cole’s Hill Archaeological Site (19-PL-984) in Plymouth, Massachusetts (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological excavations in 2021 recovered important new information about the Coles Hill Archaeological Site (19-PL-984), a Wampanoag site overlooking the waterfront in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Despite the location on a heavily developed urban lot, a preserved portion of the site featured intact stratigraphy yielding in situ cultural features, pottery...
Common and Lima Beans (Phaseolus spp.) from Cerén: Wild and Domesticated Germplasm (2015)
Archaeological investigations at Cerén, a Classic period Maya site in western El Salvador, have unearthed an abundance of carbonized bean remains, both Phaseolus vulgaris and P. lunatus. Surprisingly, the Cerén P. vulgaris bean remains were derived from both wild and domesticated populations. This find reveals that the Late Classic inhabitants continued to draw upon wild food sources even though they had clear access, as seen in the Cerén paleoethnobotanical record, to a full array of...
Communal Before Domestic? Preceramic Contexts of Exotic Food Adoption in North Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Symposium in Honor of Dolores Piperno" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have long hypothesized the causes and conditions of the transition from foraging to food production. Of specific interest here are the social and ecological conditions generating the adoption of exotic plants. Some of the best-documented paleoecological and archaeological evidence for initial food production and the adoption...
Communing with the Gods: The Paleoethnobotany of Fire Rituals (2018)
The importance of fire in Maya rituals is well-known, both archaeologically and ethnographically. Fire, which is symbolic of the life cycle in Maya ideology, has been used as a means of communicating with the supernatural world in order to manage specific aspects of everyday life, such as the success of the agricultural season. In the archaeological record, we find evidence for ancient fires as features consisting mostly of burnt plant remains, some of which resemble modern Maya fire altars both...
A Comparative Analysis of Plant Use at Five Colonial Chespeake Sites, 1630-1720 (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Our paper summarizes analyses of samples of carbonized seeds, nutshells, and plant parts and tissues which we use to investigate the relationships between people and plants in the foodways, economy, and ecology in Maryland and Virginia in the period from 1630 to 1720. Incorporating multiple contexts from five...