Making the MED: Building an Online Ethnobotanical Database

Summary

Construction of the Mesoamerican Ethnobotanical Database (MED) began in 2010 and is wrapping up in 2016. The MED began as an informal collection of images for the use of one archaeological project and became an NSF-supported online reference for public use. Based on the collections of the Searle Herbarium and hosted by the Field Museum, this online searchable database contains images of over 2500 plant vouchers, close-ups of reproductive plant parts, and seeds where available. Images are linked to basic botanical information for each voucher, and a review of over 40 ethnobotanical sources has yielded uses and common names. Creating the database involved considerations regarding sampling, equipment, time and labor, personnel, institutional, and data issues that were not obvious at the outset of the project nor (in some cases) as the project evolved. This paper describes many of the expected and unexpected hurdles that were overcome during the construction of the MED, and may be of interest to those constructing publicly available online databases in the future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage