Women’s Gardens, Long-Term Ecological Knowledge, and Deep Historical Insights in the Upper Amazon

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Modelling Human Behaviour through Ethnoarchaeology: Ethnoarchaeology as Long-Term Traditional Knowledge (L-TeK)" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

What is long-term ecological knowledge (L-TeK)? What do scholars expect of Indigenous people’s historical knowledge? Where does history reside? Whose concepts of historical time are being considered? Over many decades, there has been a growing awareness among archaeologists and other scholars of the importance of understanding Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies that root knowledge in deep ancestral time. However, ethnoarchaeological approaches have tended to favor studies of material culture that is likely to be highly visible in the archaeological record—pottery, lithics, and settlement patterns—and fast science rather than slow science. What shifts are occurring in ethnoarchaeology, as an outcome of the growing awareness of TEK and related epistemological, ethical, and practical sustainability issues? Importantly, ethnographic studies of traditional management of plant resources have been integrated with archaeological research productively, contributing deep historical insights that connect the past to the present in meaningful ways that contribute to the practical goals of sustainability. This presentation will address this broad subject by focusing on long-term ethnoarchaeological research conducted collaboratively with Indigenous communities in the Sápara Territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon, based on studies of women’s gardens.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Modelling Human Behaviour through Ethnoarchaeology: Ethnoarchaeology as Long-Term Traditional Knowledge (L-TeK)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52900