Elusive wild foods in Southeast Asian subsistence: modern ethnography and archaeological phytoliths

Summary

While grain crops, such as rice, are relatively easy to identify in the archaeobotanical record, evidence for early agriculture in the wet tropics can be elusive. In this region staple foods were not always grain-based and even today wild plants play an important role. So how do we identify ancient food pathways? Unlike temperate parts of the world, charred material rarely preserves, so this is where micro fossils such as phytoliths and starches come into play. I use phytoliths in combination with ethnobotany to evaluate plant remains from archaeological sites in Thailand and Vietnam and identify past arable systems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Recent Developments in East and Southeast Asian Archaeology II: Sites, Landscape, and Environment

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14365