People-Plant Relationships in Long-Generation Arboreal Fruit Cultivation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The study of human-plant relationships in archaeology is rich and varied, including gathering, cultivation of wild species, domestication, intensive agriculture, and nonfood uses of plants. People-plant relationships in agricultural entanglements, however, have primarily focused on the cultivation of cereals, pulses, and other annual plants. Over the course of a human lifetime, an individual farmer will interact with tens of generations of plants. Such cases have formed the basis of most discussions of people-plant entanglements, yet are only one type of relationship into which humans and cultivated plants can enter. Long-lived perennial cultivated trees, here termed “long-generation arboreal crops,” form distinct, complex relationships with human societies as they transcend single human lifespans. A single tree might see cultivation by 10 generations of humans, reversing the time scales of interaction between human and nonhuman species. Attention to this temporal dynamic dramatically influences the ways that communities of plants shape communities of humans across deep time. Examples from both Eurasia (apples, citrus) and the Americas (avocado) illustrate the distinct ecology of these plants and the distinct bodies of ecological knowledge required to establish enduring human-plant relationships with these species. Such studies give new insights into the complexity of human-plant domesticatory relationships.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36021.0