Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ancestral foods and landscapes are vital to the autonomy, identity, health, and well-being of Indigenous peoples, yet climate change is profoundly impacting their distribution and availability, and access to resources and knowledge about their nutrition, safety, and conservation is an immediate challenge. With a lineup of diverse voices, subjects, and perspectives, this symposium centers on the historical ecology and persistence of Indigenous food systems and landscapes. Studies push applied, temporal, and theoretical frontiers in the archaeology of food consumption, medicines, and human health and expand understanding of varied procurement and logistical strategies, processing and storage traditions, and environmental collective action in antiquity and modernity. We reflect on questions including, How might archaeological and historical data intersect with and speak to Tribal and local community needs and modern conservation issues? What are the challenges and potentials of research designed to support—directly or indirectly—programs focused on healthy communities and ecologies? By embracing multivocal, collaborative research and braiding Indigenous wisdom with Western science, we collectively aim to not only advance archaeological understandings but also contribute to the sustenance, resilience, decision-making autonomy, and well-being of Indigenous communities and their precious ecological heritage in the face of pressing conservation and climate change concerns.