Cooking across the Continent: Overview of Pleistocene Archaeobotanical Remains and Exploration of Biases Affecting Botanical Visibility

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Understanding how Indigenous communities used plants during the Pleistocene is fundamental to addressing questions about long-term ecological relationships, dietary practices, and adaptive strategies. Pleistocene plant use has not been a primary topic in North American archaeology, due in part to the sparse material evidence. Recently recovered archaeobotanical assemblages from across the continent offer new opportunities to consider plant foods and to reflect on variables that are biasing our view of Pleistocene food economies. This paper reviews the current evidence of dietary plant remains and investigates variables that influence the probability of botanical discovery at Pleistocene sites. Primary variables include taphonomy, site type, sampling strategies, and processing methods. This review will help us better assess long-standing ideas about Pleistocene lifeways and proposed changes over the following millennia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Hearths, Earth Ovens, and the Carbohydrate Revolution: Indigenous Subsistence Strategies and Cooking during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene in North America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35980.0