New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in 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.

This symposium highlights the contributions of scholars whose research incorporates the study of plant remains from historical contexts, both terrestrial and underwater. In recent years, historical archaeology has increasingly benefited from the analysis of botanical evidence to explore themes including managed and cultivated landscapes, culinary practices, movements of people and their plant knowledge, and the social archaeology of food. The papers in this symposium explore these recent developments in the study of human-plant interactions through a variety of different approaches and analytical techniques (including the study of macrobotanical remains, phytoliths, and pollen). These papers demonstrate the enduring value of botanical study within archaeology as it is applied in archaeological excavations, collections-based research, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Other Keywords
archaeobotany • Colonialism • Agriculture • Paleoethnobotany • Foodways • Phytoliths • Plants • Cuisine • Macrobotanical • Remote Sensing

Geographic Keywords
MIDDLE ATLANTIC • New England • US Southwest • Eastern North America • American Southwest • American Southeast • Chesapeake • Eastern United States • INDIA • Western North America

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-19 of 19)

  • Documents (19)
Documents
  • Behind the Walls and Beneath the Floors: Botanical Remains from a 19th-Century Kitchen House in Charleston, South Carolina (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Chantel E. White. Katherine M. Moore. Chelsea M. Cohen. Regina A. Fairbanks. Ashley Ray. Susan Zare.

    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. The two-story brick kitchen house at 51 Meeting Street in downtown Charleston was a central place of activity for enslaved peoples held in bondage on the Russell/Allston property from 1808 to 1864. On the first floor of the structure, they carried out cooking and laundry tasks for themselves and for the main...

  • Botanical Material from Jamestown: A New Survey (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah Stricker.

    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. Funded by the Surrey-Skiffes Creek Conservation and Curation project, Jamestown Rediscovery has undertaken an ambitious plan to better conserve, curate, and analyze botanical material from the past 25 years of excavation. Material from waterlogged contexts is of special interest, particularly to address...

  • Caring for Living Plants on Sailing Ships in Captain William Bligh’s Late 18th-Century Breadfruit Expeditions (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Brooks.

    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. The collection and study of plant and animal specimens by European explorers and naturalists was a cultural phenomenon spearheaded by the creation of the first scientific societies in the 17th century. The challenges of the safe transportation of live plants across the world on wooden ships was addressed by...

  • Chinese Diaspora Cuisine And Health (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia S. Popper.

    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. Chinese cuisine is complex, with multiple and overlapping principles related to meal planning, ingredients, cooking procedures, and dining customs. In addition, plant foods are selected and prepared to maintain balance in the body and promote good health. A review of plant remains from Chinese diaspora sites in...

  • A Comparative Analysis of Plant Use at Five Colonial Chespeake Sites, 1630-1720 (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara J. Heath. Kandace Hollenbach.

    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...

  • Consuming Conquest: Changing Foodways in Historic New Mexico (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily L. Dawson.

    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. The historic period in New Mexico is marked by series of major disruptions, including Spanish colonization, the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, the rise of the Comancheria, American Annexation (1846), and the arrival of the railroad (1878). This paper investigates how these disruptions lead to changing patterns of plant...

  • Cultivating the American Wilderness: Macrobotanical Evidence from Bartram’s Garden (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandria T Mitchem.

    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. In 1761, John Bartram, a self-taught Philadelphia naturalist, attested that his garden could “challenge any in America for variety.” He primarily referred to Eastern North American flora identified during his plant-collection trips and brought under cultivation in his own garden. These species, including the...

  • Entangled Earth: Exploring Past Indigenous Agricultural Landscapes of Wisconsin (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine McLeester. Jesse Casana. Alison Anastasio.

    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. Wisconsin has over 450 documented archaeological and historical Indigenous agricultural fields. Recorded primarily in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, less than 10% of these archaeological field sites remain today. This presentation describes our ongoing efforts to document and investigate...

  • Extracting Information from Concentrations of Desiccated Plant Remains (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi F. Miller. Chantel E. White.

    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. Archaeologists periodically encounter concentrations of uncharred plant remains. Whether excavated or never actually buried, they are a challenge for interpretation. In addition to identification, the archaeobotanical tasks include determining the agent of deposition and the source and date of the material. This...

  • From The Leaves On The Trees In The Forest To The Stones And Sands Of The River: Archaeobotanical Investigations Of Spanish New Mexican Land Use (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather B Trigg.

    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. In 17th-century New Mexico, subsistence activities were the major ways Spanish colonists engaged plants and created landscapes. Colonists’ relationships with plants were developed through a combination of existing notions of human-environment interactions and the creation of new practices that suited the social...

  • Have you had rice today? The costs of consumption in Early Modern South India (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen D. Morrison. Jennifer Bates.

    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. Rice and other water and labor-intensive foods form the core of elite South Indian cuisines, the food of both gods and high-status individuals. Rice is synonymous with food in several South Indian languages and yet rice-based cuisines were (and are) not universally available. In the semi-arid interior, the costs...

  • Luxury Taxa: An Analysis of Macrobotanical Remains from Monticello’s First Kitchen (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peggy Marie Humes.

    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. Cooking provides a glimpse into how peoples’ choices of native domesticates, wild, and luxury imported plant taxa played a prominent role in their diets and general foodways practices. Food reflects and helps constitute social class, gender roles, and cultural traditions; determines trade networks; and in some...

  • Macrobotanical Evidence for Tobacco Use within Enslaved Communities: Emerging Patterns from the Middle Atlantic States. (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine McKnight.

    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. Tobacco agriculture was central to the landscape, economy, and cultural heritage of much of the Middle Atlantic region from the 17th through the 19th centuries. A growing body of macrobotanical evidence recovered from the homes and workspaces of enslaved Africans in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware suggests that...

  • New Directions for Pollen and Phytolith Analysis in Historic New England (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anya Gruber.

    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. Microbotanical analysis has been historically underutilized at colonial-era sites in New England. This talk will discuss the use of pollen and phytolith at three historic sites in coastal Massachusetts: Brewster Gardens and Burial Hill Plymouth; the Doane Family Homestead in Eastham; and Ben Luce Pond on...

  • The Origins of Food Inequality in the US South: Intersecting the Past, Present, and Future (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimberly C. Kasper. Jamie Evans.

    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. This project highlights an interdisciplinary approach to uncover the origins of food inequality as related to food production, distribution, and access across the US South. Our case study, Memphis and its surrounding rural landscape, is well known for its “Wall Street-like” slave-based economy and commodity crop...

  • Pueblo Agricultural Persistence and Innovation during Spanish Colonization (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kaitlyn E Davis.

    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. This project investigates how (and to what extent) Pueblo people in the Rio Grande region of New Mexico adjusted their agricultural practices when confronted with Spanish colonization. The data collected for this project involved surveying the areas around multiple pre-contact and contact-era Pueblos to document...

  • Roots, Resilience, and Resistance: Evaluating Evidence of African American Herbal Medicine (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sierra S. Roark.

    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. This paper will explore pursuits of well-being, resistance, and resilience by looking at ethnohistorical and macrobotanical evidence for African American herbal medicine from the American South. Ethnographic and oral history records highlight the historical importance of herbal medicine to African American...

  • Seeing Forests Through the Seas: Ship Timbers as Landscape Artifacts in the Middle Atlantic (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea M. Cohen.

    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. The colonization of North American landscapes and seascapes was closely tied, connected by imperatives to expand, urbanize, and increase economic production. In North America’s Middle Atlantic, landscape colonization and concomitant urbanization led to changes in both the region’s terrain and its economic...

  • Tracing the Movement of European-introduced Foods into Cherokee Country (2022)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle C. Purcell.

    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. This paper examines the routes European-introduced foods traveled into Cherokee towns during European colonization (the sixteenth- to eighteenth-centuries). We know that peaches, cowpeas, watermelons, and sweet potatoes were all new foods Cherokees adopted from Europeans. However, I argue that each food was...