Mesoamerican Plants of the Night: A Paleoethnobotanical Perspective

Summary

The ancient Mesoamerican landscape has been extensively researched archaeologically, with the field of paleoethnobotany allowing for a better understanding of what plants the ancient people valued agriculturally and in their economic, ritual, medicinal and other daily practices. Typically, archaeologists interpret the archaeological record in terms of how the ancient peoples interacted with the artifacts and navigated through the landscape during the daytime. What about nightly practices? How have nighttime activities left their mark on the paleoethnobotanical record in Mesoamerica? The ancient Maya associated much of their environment to various night-related practices. The ancient nightly landscape can even be imagined through nocturnally active plants that either bloomed, were fragrant, or visibly illuminated in the dark. Mesoamerican interpretations of their environment can be seen through both their linguistic classifications of various species and also their nightly medicinal applications and preparations. Some plants held more of a symbolic meaning for the Maya, where nightly conditions determined their management strategies or even foretold the fate of the world. Ethnobotanical data helps illuminate how the ancient peoples at various Mesoamerican archaeological sites interacted with and viewed their nocturnal environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Night and Darkness in Precolulmbian Mexico and Central America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14935