Sowing the Seeds of Curiosity One Visitor at a Thyme: The UWG Interpretive Anthropology Garden Exhibit

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Foodways provide an important window for us to view important components of cultures, and they provide an important vehicle for engaging a broad audience in an educational way. They are something that we can all relate to because we all participate in them in one way or another. The University of West Georgia’s Interpretive Anthropology Garden is an experiment in creating a unique pedagogical resource aimed at engaging a broad audience with foodways by acting as both a botanical archive and an interpretive exhibit. At its core, it is a seasonally-rotating exhibit of four themed gardens, each of which aligns with courses taught in the Anthropology Program. As such, the garden is aligned with course curricula and includes plants discussed in classes. As an exhibit, the aim is to engage students and others with educational content through interpretive signage. As a garden, it allows them to observe and interact with previously unknown or unfamiliar plants, but also to harvest the very plants discussed in classes. By taking a dual-pronged approach, the Interpretive Anthropology Garden provides a unique pedagogical resource.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37586.0