Using Ancient Plant Macroremains to Understand Resource Consumption in the Past and Present

Summary

Many people recognize the need for markedly different mode of living amid a growing body of scientific evidence that the current world population is environmentally unsustainable. Exploring ancient foodways and landscape management techniques may improve our ability to imagine highly productive modes of food production and resource consumption dissimilar to that of our current global reality. Here, I show how a reconstruction of macrobotanical and faunal remains builds a narrative of anthropogenic forest development on a small island in Western Caribbean Panama during a period of rapid population growth and sociopolitical networking (ca. AD 500-1500). Using this example, we explore specific incremental changes that routine task performance and collective decision-making produce in vegetation and fauna, which in turn supported a growing human population of the past and remain visible in the archaeological record of the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Science of Organic Residue Analysis and the Art of Cultural Interpretation II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17519