Introduction to Paleoethnobotany

Catalog description

Paleoethnobotany, the study of the human use of plants in antiquity, uses plant remains recovered from archaeological sites to address a broad range of topics. Paleoethnobotanical data can be used to investigate social, economic, and environmental issues including the shift from hunting and gathering to farming, adaptations to climate shift, the development of state-level societies, and social hierarchies to name a few topics. This course introduces the deposition, preservation, sampling, recovery, identification, description, and interpretation of paleoethnobotanical remains. This course is arranged around 1) exploring the major classes of plant remains likely to be encountered in archaeological sites; 2) identifying these remains and organizing the data to make interpretable results; and 3) addressing key issues within the sub-discipline including preservation, analytical methods, sampling, collection, and interpretation.