The Black Burned Bits of Prehistory: A Celebration of Dr. Karen R. Adams

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Enduring Relationships: People, Plants, and the Contributions of Karen R. Adams" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper provides a brief overview of Karen Adams’s career and contributions, with a special emphasis on her extensive research and her legacy as a mentor to decades of junior scholars and budding archaeobotanists. Dr. Adams’s investigations into the long history of people-plant relationships in the US Southwest and beyond exemplify the power of a mix of fieldwork, particularly building robust comparative collections, experimental archaeology, rigorous and innovative analytical approaches, and dedication to preserving accessible data. Pursing an independent scholarly path, Dr. Adams’s professional contributions and work are marked by collaborative and creative approaches, often combining Indigenous histories and traditions with archaeobotany and other plant sciences. Through a presentation that highlights a rich research career spanning the Pleistocene to the present day in publications as varied as children’s books to journal articles, and hundreds of reports, we explore important themes in Dr. Adams’s career that has improved our understanding of the past and the ways that people and plants have shaped one another for millennia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Enduring Relationships: People, Plants, and the Contributions of Karen R. Adams

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40029.0