A Hohokam farming family living along the Santa Cruz River in southern Arizona In the 11th-12th centuries A.D. harvested over 1,000 liters of loose maize (corn) kernels from a good summer’s crop. The family carefully packed the kernels into a large subterranean bell-shaped storage pit, then sealed the pit to guard this important food staple for the coming winter months. However, before any kernels were retrieved, the entire contents of the pit charred, probably due to spontaneous combustion. These stored kernels could have fed five people for a year, a potentially devastating loss for this hard-working farming family.

Apparently, there still exists in some quarters a rivalry between “scientific” and “humanistic” anthropologists and anthropologies. This being the case, it is appropriate to restate the classic Boasian, and more broadly Neo-Kantian, framework from which ethnobiology emerged. This theoretical perspective sees scientific and humanistic scholarship as equally necessary and basic to understanding people; the quest for knowledge is one. The cultures we study do not make this particular separation. I have compared scientific and humanistic analyses to the two wings of a bird; the bird cannot fly without both working together, but neither one is the bird itself. Examples form Maya and Northwest Coast cultures provide not only evidence for this, but new and different ways of looking at the enterprise of understanding.

Shepherdia canadensis (soapberry, or soopolallie) is a dioecious nitrogen-fixing deciduous shrub widespread across Canada and the northern and western United States. Indigenous peoples have developed many unique ways of preparing and serving soapberries, which are bitter-tasting due to saponins and foam into a frothy confection when whipped with water. The berries and plants are also used medicinally. Soapberries, considered inedible over most of their range, are widely traded in northwestern North America, and specialized harvesting methods, processing, and serving implements have likewise been exchanged. Soapberry names in indigenous languages give clues about patterns of exchange across geographic and cultural space.

Extracts of 43 medicinal plants from the Trujillo and Chiclayo areas in Northern Peru were screened for antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Proteus vulgaris, using th agar-diffusion method. Eighteen species showed activity against al least one of the bacteria.

The Cherokee “Booger” dance has been documented and debated for over two centuries. Yet the focal point of the ceremony, the Booger mask, has been largely overlooked by anthropologists. The Booger mask is described as spiritual, expressive, and functional through its construction from native floral and faunal materials. Both the Booger dance and the Booger mask are viewed by outsiders as expressions of ribaldry and distortion. In this study, personal narratives, participant observation, and ethnohistoric materials revealed new pathways toward the source of debate among tribal members regarding the symbolism and social history of the Booger mask and its constituent parts, all of which are rendered meaningful in the context of the dance. Interpretive ethnobiology is shown to illuminate much about the political impact and future direction of Cherokee art forms, in addition to strategies for revitalizing them in Native American communities.

While working as a physician in Oakland, California, I have experienced a spectrum of ethnobotanical systems utilized by my diverse patient population represented by over 100 different ethnolinguistic groups, many of which are newly arrive immigrants. I also worked with many of these ethnolinguistic groups while conducting ethnobotanical research in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This provides a unique opportunity to compare the ethnobotanical systems utilized by people living in the country of origin to those used by immigrants from that country living in northern California. Examples of medicinal and food plants that have been brought into northern California by immigrants from different parts of the world will be discussed.

The systematic use of flotation devices, as well as the application of microanalyses, allows us now to recover a broader spectrum of plants from archaeological sites, and specifically wild taxa. Thanks to ethnographic works, we know that wild plants do play an important role in pre-industrial economies. If our vision of past plant use is changing, the lack of interpretive tools, together with the variability of human behavior, challenge our ability to understand the socio- economical meaning of wild plant presence in pre-Columbian societies. I will illustrate these issues with examples taken from Peruvian Formative archaeological sites dated between 1800 and 100 BCE.

Rivercane (Arundinaria gigantea) was one of the most important materials of culture for southeastern Native Americans, providing aspects of housing, sitting and sleeping mats, baskets, blow guns, and household utensils. Concern for acculturation among the Eastern Cherokee stimulated cultural revitalization programs, placing new demands on much needed natural resources. The Revitalization of Traditional Cherokee Artisan Resources initiative brings together Cherokee artisans and researchers to inform restoration efforts from the perspective of Cherokee traditional ecological knowledge.

The Kwakwaka’wakw of the Pacific Northwest once gathered ts’ats’ayem, Zostera marina L.; Zosteraceae (eelgrass) rhizomes for food. Z. marina is a foundation species of estuarine regions, providing substrate and habitat for a diversity of organisms crucial to the marine food web. Contemporary elders recall harvesting considerable quantities of the plants every spring, and have suggested that ts’ats’ayem rhizomes grow thicker and the meadows more productive when sites are routinely harvested. My study has been an interdisciplinary examination of ts’ats’ayem ethnoecology through interviews, harvesting expeditions and an in situ experiment to determine traditional methodology and inquire into the positive growth response to harvest, contributing to the body of ‘keeping it living’ practices.

This paper attempts to bring more attention to an often-overlooked cultural cultural landscape-the suburban yard. Because this landscape is familiar to many Americans, it has not merited much intellectual study. This familiarity, though, is the reason more attention should be taken to understand lawns and homegardens. They speak to the discourses shaping American life-wealth, control, and status-and also reveal the feelings held towards nature of people who live in a very modern world. In this study I found that yards themselves are divided and each division says something unique of the care that has been taken to keep it free of weeds. Lawns can also be divided along lines of gender. The history of the lawn helps explain the motivation for owning a yard, as do the gardener’s choices regarding cultivated plants. Whatever the personal choices, suburban yards speak of the culture that has tended them.

For the past several hundred years, rural high granite measa of Beira Alta, Portugal have grown rye cereal to fee urban residents, resulting in a new loss of nitrogen from the rural agro-ecosystem. Nitrogen is returned to the soil by adding copious quantities of organic matter derived mostly from the broom, giesta (Cytisus, a nitrogen fixer). However, giesta branches do not rot readily in the soil because the C/N ratio is too high. So farmers keep sheep for excrement to mix with giesta to lower the C/N ratio.

Three Ngöbe- Guaymí home gardens in Bocas Del Toro Panama were mapped and inventoried for edible plant species diversity. Thirty-seven species across thirty genera and twenty-two families were identified during walk through interviews. Digital photography and videography supplemented collaborator testimony. Ngöbe-Guaymí families are being displaced throughout the archipelago as foreign real estate investment begins to dominate the landscape. The tourism boom that is fueling this development is changing the economy of the region. This study aimed to establish a baseline for measuring cultural erosion and loss of traditional botanical knowledge in the coming years through home garden size and diversity.

Historical ecology rethinks processes involved in the formation and transformation of ecosystems. Complex interactions between humans and natural habitats are often responsible for the formation, maintenance and creation of landscapes; however, historical depth has been largely ignored or not examined thoroughly. Archaeological and botanical data help settle some of these issues but ethnoecology and ethnohistory are also necessary in fine-tuning time scales. Anthropogenic areas represent both past and present practices, also implying interactions between cultures. Closer detail must also be given to implications of management. Drawing on indigenous and peasant examples from Amazonia, this paper reassesses some of these findings.

The conservation of herpetofauna in Vietnam’s Cat Tien Biosphere Reserve requires the coordination of the discordant priorities. People continue to exploit natural resources inside the boundaries of Cat Tien despite the attempts of environmental organizations, governments, armed and un-armed staff. It was long-ago concluded without substantiation from ethnographic research that regional minority groups negatively impact biodiversity and they are thus prohibited from interacting with wildlife. This research report explores ways that Western herpetological and ethnobiological knowledge can be integrated in order to repair the collapse of biodiversity that has occurred in Cat Tien due to social conflict and resource mismanagement.

The development of pottery technology is typically associated with sedentary, food producing cultures. However, in southeast Texas, prehistoric foragers adopted pottery in the absence of these traits. Since pottery often functions as a part of the larger subsistence strategy, understanding how subsistence changed is important for explaining why this new technology was adopted. Under optimal foraging theory, a predictable consequence of the cooking and storage advantages of pottery include intensive use of within-bone nutrients of vertebrate resources. White-tailed deer remains from the Eagle’s Ridge site (41CH252) are used to evaluate these relationships using a taphonomic bone-fragmentation model.

Shade-grown cacao cultivation is increasingly viewed as an agroforestry system that can promote biodiversity and provide economic benefits to small-scale producers. In this paper, I review historical and current trends regarding cacao cultivation in the Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico. From the prehispanic period until the late 19th century, Soconusco was famous for its high quality cacao. I examine here how and why cacao cultivation in Soconusco is now in decline, I discuss how this is affecting the region’s environment and economy, and I explore possible ways to reverse these trends.

The Stormbird (Kurrakurraja, Channel-billed Cuckoo, Scythrops novaehollandiae is the largest member of the Cuculidae and is a significant species in the cultural and ceremonial practices of several Aboriginal language groups in the north and central areas of the Northern Territory of Australia. In this paper I will examine aspects of the cultural relations between Aboriginal peoples and Kurrakurraja. I will examine naming similarities throughout Kurrakurraja’s migratory range and the particular cultural significance of Kurrakurraja for one language group in the central Northern Territory and its role in continental-scale ceremonies across Australia’s Top End.

A multistakeholder grassroots ethnobotanical coalition has been built in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to restore wild rice populations, ecosystems, and sustainable use of manoomin (Zizania palustris). A discussion of strategies including community meetings, a regional conference, restoration projects, management plans, and undergraduate research along with a Native American Studies course credit offering for student conference participation will be analyzed. Projections for future coalition activities will be highlighted and the use of this wild rice coalition case study will be proposed for teaching upper level ethnobotany and ecology at undergraduate institutions in the Great Lakes.

Botanical herbariums often contain not only pressed plants attached to annotated sheets, but they also have accompanying field notebooks describing the locations of the plants and some contain Indian plant names and uses. Several examples will be explored and tales woven to illustrate the value of this information: two collectors illustrated are Martin W. Gorman and Henry Spalding. Another resource where hidden plant uses can be excavated is in the “old” floras, Kearney and Peebles’, Arizona Flora and the original Jepson’s A Flora of California. Sometimes these treasures are “right under our noses” if we only know where to look.

I recorded an inventory of 69 folk generic bird taxa and a total of 103 terminal taxa for birds in San Juan Gbee, a Zapotec municipio in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca. I also recorded 190 species of birds in and near that community during several years of intermittent field work 1996–2003. I will briefly compare this ethnoornithological vocabulary and its associated beliefs and practices with comparable systems elsewhere. As seem often the case, small, migratory birds are relatively poorly differentiated as are larger species that are of seasonal or sporadic occurrence. Onomatopoeia is common in naming birds, and certain imitative names are quite creative. Nocturnal birds are widely feared as ill omens, as are certain wrens that nest in abandoned structures. Turkeys and chickens are common domesticates. Curiously, the chicken, a post-colonial introduction, is highly differentiated by breed, while the turkey, an indigenous domesticate, is not. A few wild gallinaceous birds are hunted. The sphinx moth is considered by some to be a “night hummingbird,” though others consider that name metaphorical.

Ethnobiology is largely concerned with the documentation and preservation of “Traditional Ecological Knowledge”. This knowledge is illustrated in agricultural, medicinal and subsistence practices of indigenous cultures, in which individuals interact directly with their living environment to satisfy their basic needs. As an examination of cultural phenomena that maintain and propagate traditional knowledge, this is an attempt to understand the ecological importance of traditional knowledge. This study observes the presence and perceived importance of traditional ideologies within three Costa Rican indigenous groups and compares that to the sustainability of their agroecosystems.

In northwest British Columbia, long indigenous occupance and management of the landscape has had pervasive ecological effects. In such an environment discriminating “natural” and “anthropogenic” distributions may be problematic. Elucidating the influence of First Nations on the distributions of key plants may be approached through analysis of the anomalous distributions of plant species which are known to be ethnobotanically important in relation to known travel corridors and other sites of historic and pre-contact occupation. Our research focuses upon anomalies in the distribution of two key economic: Pacific Crabapple; and rice root lily in the Skeena River region.

The Haida are a distinct indigenous people who have resided in their home territory on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) for thousands of years. They have developed important relationships with the diverse habitats and species of their territorial lands and waters. At the same time, they have increased the extent of their resource base through a wide range of trade networks, extending across Hecate Strait to many mainland locations to as far away as California. In this paper, we explore the documented Haida trade routes and discuss how trade networks have supported Haida culture and economy.

Nepal, although a tiny Himalayan country occupying only .09% of the total land surface of the world, is endowed with topographical, climatic, cultural and biological diversities. Topographical and climatic diversities have given rise to specific niches, which harbor unique assemblages of flora and fauna, some of which are endemic to the country. There are a number of groups of indigenous people who have been interacting with these biological resources accumulating a rich body of knowledge about their use, management and conservation. Tamang is one of the groups of the indigenous people of the country. Although there is growing trend of erosion of indigenous knowledge system globally, Tamangs still harbor fairly good knowledge about animal use. Animals have been their main source of protein and healing compounds. Some of the animals are still used as omen indicators and weather predictors. They have been using many of the animal resources in their magico-religious sphere. Thus the Tamang-animal relationship has remained intact both at a material as well as a spiritual level from the very early period.

Northwest Coast Indigenous fishers’ collective knowledge of how specific migration routes influence well-being and abundance of salmon is compared here with biotechnological measurements of energy levels and reproductive capability of Sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) traveling upriver migration routes of varying length and elevation. Interviews with Chief Harry Nyce, Director of Nisga’a Fisheries in the Nass Valley, Northern British Columbia, showed that First Nations phenological knowledge is based on a much longer observation period than biotechnological research, and that place-based traditional knowledge can work with biotechnology to benefit health and longevity of salmon populations.

As part of a long-term study of wildlife trade in the marketplaces of southern Morocco, we are currently focusing on the trade in medicinal roots, which are locally gathered, sometimes toxic, difficult to identify and in general vulnerable to over-harvesting. We have inventoried more than 80 plant species in southern Morocco that yield useful roots, of which about half are commercialized. Semi-structured and structured interviews with 35 herbalists in Marrakech revealed interesting patterns of knowledge of a selection of 34 of the most important roots. While some roots are available in all stands and are easily recognized by herbalists and consumers, others are a source of confusion and substitution.

The Ñuu savi (Mixtec) people of Santiago Nuyoo, Oaxaca (Mexico), have been migrating to the US for more than fifteen years and have formed a transnational community. This research proposes a first approach to the study of the impact of transnational life on the maintenance, value and transmission of their Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK). It also examines the extent to which TEK has become a dynamic component of their redefined ethnic identity. This project involves a multi-sited ethnography to document TEK both in the community of origin and its satellite communities in northern Mexico and in the U.S.

The use of fruits of the desert from the southwestern region of the United States will be presented in the context of nutrient and health benefits for the Indigenous Peoples of the region. Showcased will be the importance of saguaro (Cereus giganteus), prickly pear (Opuntia species), sumac (Rhus species), chiltepin (Capsicum annuum var.) and yucca (Yucca arizonica). Traditional harvesting and preparation techniques, nutrients and known compounds will be presented along with the desert’s potential to produce plants with antioxidant and antidiabetic benefits.

Farmers in northern Mexico and the pueblos of the southwestern United States report using maize kernel color in planting and other decisions. In a project conducted by Iowa State University agronomists, different varieties of native American maize grown in an identical environment under optimal conditions promoted maximum trait expression in the plants. Here we explore the relationship between kernel color, morphological features, and growth and development of several maize landraces to assess how closely color and plant growth and reproductive traits are related. We focus on Puebloan varieties of maize, as these appear to have the greatest conservation of color.

Most Researchers agree that there was an uninterrupted transition in the subsistence economy between the Late Archaic (3500–1250 BP) and the Late Prehistoric periods in north-central Texas. The nomadic hunter/gatherers of both periods practiced a broad-spectrum subsistence economy focused on white-tailed deer, rabbit and turtle. However, foraging indices comprised of these taxa indicate an increase in high-rank resources in the Late Prehistoric in terms of both costs and benefits. This could be due to the technological advent of the bow and arrow in the Late Prehistoric period.

The Maasai are a pastoral community in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. They still uphold their traditional lifestyle characterized by ceremonies. The circumcision ceremony, emurata, is preceded by killing of birds for headgear. Each initiate has to kill approximately sixty birds of mixed species and keep on replacing spoilt bird skins. Research was carried out to find the significance of birds in Maasai ceremonies and conservation status. Birds such as Schalow’s Turacos, Grey Helmet Shrike have been affected perhaps due to hunting, but hard data on actual causes is lacking. The Maasai do not usually kill birds for other reasons.

“The Salt Song Trail: Bringing Creation Back Together,” that I co-producedwith the Cultural Conservancy and the Salt Song Trail Project and wrote aboutin my recently published essay, “Oral Tradition, Identity, and Inter-generational Healing Through the Southern Paiute Salt Songs,” in Andrew Jolivette’santhology, Cultural Representation in Native America (AltaMira Press 2006). The Salt Songs are the sacred songs of the Southern Paiute people. The songs areused in memorial ceremonies, for cultural revitalization and as a spiritual bond for the Southern Paiute Nation of the Southwest. The film explores the historical and spiritual journey and purpose of the Salt Songs and documents a healing ceremony at the Sherman Indian School.

For thousands of years, British Columbia’s First Nations have communicated within and across cultures to build diversity, strength, and adaptability. We compare two distinct processes – cultural repatriation and ethnobiological restoration – as parallel ways along which First Nations are working to regain healthy, productive, and stable communities and ecosystems. Restoration and repatriation concepts are distilled from cultural and ecological rejuvenation projects in Haida Gwaii and the Nass Valley. These Northern British Columbian experiences suggest that when repatriation and restoration are carried out within indigenous cultural systems, the results rekindle traditional language usage, sustainable economic opportunities, and well-being of people and ecosystems.

Sedimentary cores were extracted from former mangrove swamps in SW coastal Guayas province. Mangrove swamps are low-energy environments in which sediments carried from surrounding drainages build up. Microfossils extracted from swamp cores may capture regional patterning in vegetation—the composite picture of human and natural processes on the landscape—in settings which lack natural lakes. We provide an overview of the core sequences recovered from three localities, focusing on dating and sedimentation patterns. An interesting finding is a period of very rapid sedimentation across all sequences at 14C BP 6100. We discuss possible interpretations of this event and present preliminary microfossil results.

Paleoethnobotanical analyses of plant remains recovered from the site of El Presidio de San Francisco have provided new perspectives on the role of foodways in culture contact, and about colonial use of the local environment. We examine the dietary choices made by the colonial settlers who had been recruited from Northern Mexico, and the differences in foodways and resource use between soldiering and farming populations at the settlement. Comparing archaeobotanical evidence from El Presidio de San Francisco with findings at mission sites allows a consideration of the differences and similarities between colonial and mission neophyte diets.

Every rural Dominican knows several “bush” medicines, though individuals’ knowledge varies. We present the effects of education, employment, consumerism, parenthood, age, and gender on the number medicinal plants individuals can recall. Age positively associates with number of species listed, which may reflect relative disinterest among the young, but may simply indicate continual lifetime learning. Contrary to predictions, modernization via commercial occupation and consumerism is positively associated with herbal knowledge. Gender, age, occupation and education are significant predictors in multivariate analysis. Significant interactions among the variables suggest that modernization has complex effects on Dominican ethnomedicine.

Archaeological remains of two unionid species (Megalonaias nervosa Rafinesque, 1820 and Quadrula pustulosa mortoni Conrad, 1836) were excavated on the West Fork of the Trinity River in northern Texas. The discovery is important because little is known about the late Holocene hydrology of this drainage, and the effects of modern human impacts on the Trinity River are unclear. These freshwater mussel remains suggest a stable perennial flowing stream existed roughly 600 to 1000 years ago, which clarifies pre-modern hydrological conditions in the drainage system. In addition, the archaeological remains extend the documented modern biogeographic ranges of both species.

Social scientists interested in indigenous histories have tended to focus on short-term socio-cultural phenomena using unilinear models. In contrast, I will test the ability of an ‘interdisciplinary dialogical framework’ to draw meaningful correlations between a human-environment ecodynamics of the longue duree. This framework will incorporate ideas from four primary disciplines and other sub-disciplines that originate in anthropology, ecology, geography and history. Combining contemporary technologies in remote sensing and GIS with traditional knowledge of toponyms will be an integral feature of this dialogical process of interpreting the ancient archaeological past embedded in Haida Gwaii landscapes.

In this paper we merge different specialists’ data sets in order to integrate the analysis of the material remains of past dietary practices. The systematic study of faunal and botanical remains combined with ceramic and architectural evidence enables us to differentiate distinct food and preparation practices in spatially segregated regions of the Wari site of Conchopata (AD550–1000). These multiple lines of evidence provide robust means of revealing ancient diet as well as accessing the extent of feasting and other non-quotidian culinary events.

Ethnomedicinal studies on the commonlyh used food plants were conducted in one of the remotest parts of the eastern Himalayas. The Himalayan mountain complex is a rich source of medicinal folklore with its diverse flora and indigenous systems of medicine. Furthermore, it has richly contributed to modern medicine and continues to provide additional insight in improving human health locally and around the world. This preliminary study may stimulate further documentation of traditional folklore where we may find new and more effective drugs for the treatment of human afflictions.

Forced relocation and territorial reduction were strategies that European colonial powers commonly employed to subdue indigenous populations. Prior to colonization in the 17th century, the Pequot of Connecticut occupied 160,000 acres from which they maintained a mixed subsistence strategy of agriculture and hunted/gathered coastal and upland resources. The reservation, imposed during the late 17th century, reduced this to 30000 inland/upland acres. The macrobotanical remains from two sites, a 17th century fortified village and an 18th century farmstead, are compared to examine the temporal continuities and differences in subsistence practices as the Pequot struggled with the impacts of colonization and a reduced and bounded territory.

Analysis of plant and animal data from the Sandy site (44RN220) indicate a short-term seasonal encampment geared towards the collection of medicinal plants and the hunting of deer. The plant assemblage is dominated by medicinal plants, namely bearsfoot, with relatively fewer remains of the typical staple plant foods, maize and hickory. Lesser amounts of other plants with medicinal qualities were also identified, including bedstraw, holly, and wax myrtle. Moreover, the faunal remains consist almost of entirely of white-tailed deer skeletal elements; analysis of body part distributions produced a reverse utility curve, an outcome that strongly suggests a short-term butchery/kill site.

An unexpectedly large percentage of the signs in the Indus or Harappan symbol system represent what appear to be seeds, sprouts, plants, farm animals, agricultural tools, fields, and farming paraphernalia. While many of these signs are highly stylized, pictographic variants of others exist that allow us to make reasonable guesses concerning their precise referents. The most interesting of these variants have anthropomorphic forms, suggesting that links not only existed between these symbols and agriculture but with religious-ritual ideas as well. In this talk we show a representative number of these symbols in their inscriptional contexts and discuss the potential light they throw on Indus agricultural rituals, temporal and regional variations in farm output, and agricultural means of exchange. Emphasis is placed on regional variations in the farming signs found on apparent ritual artifacts and on the possibilities of correlating symbols with what is known of Indus agriculture from archaeological studies. We end with discussion of the use that future studies of the temporal and geographic distribution of these symbols might provide in helping distinguish agricultural production and rituals in different Indus microecologies, which varied widely in temperature, rainfall patterns, planting seasons, and agricultural output.

We decipher the ecological and archaeological history of Ebey’s Prairie, a small, resource-rich opening within the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest Coast. We determine activities through time using artifacts, features, and archaeobotanical remains. Regional ecological data inform our discussion of human-influenced prairie persistence throughout the Holocene. Our results show a subtle yet rich reflection of hunter-gatherer land-use, including land management, over the past several millennia. Diversity of remains suggests that indigenous people were not focusing on specific species but were utilizing a diverse ecosystem and fostering the prairie condition through strategic burning.

The nature of starch to gelatinize when exposed to heat has discouraged paleoethnobotanists from attempting analysis of charred food residues from pottery. Pottery is found in almost all regions of the world, has a long history of use, and when present at sites is often ubiquitous due to its durability. Thus, applying starch analysis to charred pottery residues represents a significant new technique. This paper will present results of analyses of cooking-pot residues from Loma Alta, Ecuador that show that maize was consumed as food there by at least 3350*nd 3000 Cal BC, representing the earliest directly-dated maize in South America.