Botanical Resources in Ancient Costa Rican Cloud Forests

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Paleoethnobotanical investigations at domestic contexts in Arenal, Costa Rica, reveal the plant resources utilized by past peoples living in a tropical montane cloud forest setting. Macrobotanical remains recovered through horizontal excavations of household structures at G-995 La Chiripa and G-164 Sitio Bolivar and flotation of soil samples collected from those structures demonstrate the plants incorporated into daily life as food, fuel, medicine, tools, and construction materials. Plant remains include a variety of seeds and fruits, but the plant assemblage is overwhelmingly dominated by wood charcoal that has been identified through anthracological analysis, thus illuminating the diverse arboreal resources that contributed toward domestic activities. A strong reliance on woody vegetation may have been an adaptive strategy incorporated into life in a tropical cloud forest ecosystem.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35621.0