Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 160732315X ISBN 13: 9781607323150

Publisher: University Press of Colorado, 2014

Synopsis

Paleoethnobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains, is poised at the intersection of the study of the past and concerns of the present, including agricultural decision making, biodiversity, and global environmental change, and has much to offer to archaeology, anthropology, and the interdisciplinary study of human relationships with the natural world. Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany demonstrates those connections and highlights the increasing relevance of the study of past human-plant interactions for understanding the present and future.A diverse and highly regarded group of scholars reference a broad array of literature from around the world as they cover their areas of expertise in the practice and theory of paleoethnobotany―starch grain analysis, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, digital data management, and ecological and postprocessual theory.The only comprehensive edited volume focusing on method and theory to appear in the last twenty-five years, Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany addresses the new areas of inquiry that have become central to contemporary archaeological debates, as well as the current state of theoretical, methodological, and empirical work in paleoethnobotany.

About this title

About the Author

John M. Marston is assistant professor in the Departments of Archaeology and Anthropology at Boston University. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University. Christina Warinner is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and a research affiliate of the Molecular Research Group at the University of Zôrich's Centre for Evolutionary Medicine.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany

By John M. Marston, Jade d' Alpoim Guedes, Christina Warinner

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2014 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-315-0

Contents

List of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
Preface JOHN M. MARSTON, JADE D'ALPOIM GUEDES, AND CHRISTINA WARINNER, 
1. Paleoethnobotanical Method and Theory in the Twenty-First Century JOHN M. MARSTON, CHRISTINA WARINNER, AND JADE D'ALPOIM GUEDES, 
Part I: Formation Processes, 
2. Formation Processes of the Macrobotanical Record DAPHNE E. GALLAGHER, 
3. Formation and Taphonomic Processes Affecting Starch Granules AMANDA G. HENRY, 
4. Formation Processes of Pollen and Phytoliths DEBORAH M. PEARSALL, 
Part II: Recovery, Identification, and Data Management, 
5. Sampling Strategies in Paleoethnobotanical Analysis JADE D'ALPOIM GUEDES AND ROBERT SPENGLER, 
6. Recovering Macrobotanical Remains: Current Methods and Techniques CHANTEL E. WHITE AND CHINA P. SHELTON, 
7. Laboratory Analysis and Identification of Plant Macroremains GAYLE FRITZ AND MARK NESBITT, 
8. Digitizing the Archaeobotanical Record CHRISTINA WARINNER AND JADE D'ALPOIM GUEDES, 
Part III: Quantification and Analysis, 
9. Ratios and Simple Statistics in Paleoethnobotanical Analysis: Data Exploration and Hypothesis Testing JOHN M. MARSTON, 
10. The Use of Multivariate Statistics within Archaeobotany ALEXIA SMITH, 
11. Analysis and Interpretation of Intrasite Variability in Paleoethnobotanical Remains: A Consideration and Application of Methods at the Ravensford Site, North Carolina AMBER M. VANDERWARKER, JENNIFER V. ALVARADO, AND PAUL WEBB, 
12. Intersite Variation within Archaeobotanical Charred Assemblages: A Case Study Exploring the Social Organization of Agricultural Husbandry in Iron Age and Roman Britain CHRIS J. STEVENS, 
Part IV: Integration of Paleoethnobotanical Data, 
13. Peopling the Environment: Interdisciplinary Inquiries into Socioecological Systems Incorporating Paleoclimatology and Geoarchaeology TIMOTHY C. MESSNER AND GARY E. STINCHCOMB, 
14. From the Ground Up: Advances in Stable Isotope-Based Paleodietary Inference CHRISTINA WARINNER, 
15. Ancient Biomolecules from Archaeobotanical Remains NATHAN WALES, KENNETH ANDERSEN, AND ENRICO CAPPELLINI, 
16. A Landscape Context for Paleoethnobotany: The Contribution of Aerial and Satellite Remote Sensing JESSE CASANA, 
Part V: Interpretation, 
17. Human Behavioral Ecology and Paleoethnobotany KRISTEN J. GREMILLION, 
18. Documenting Human Niche Construction in the Archaeological Record BRUCE D. SMITH, 
19. Paleoethnobotanical Analysis, Post-Processing SHANTI MORELL-HART, 
References Cited, 
About the Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Paleoethnobotanical Method and Theory in the Twenty-First Century

* * *

JOHN M. MARSTON, CHRISTINA WARINNER, AND JADE D'ALPOIM GUEDES

The origins of the study of relationships between people and plants in the past began as early as the nineteenth century with the identification of desiccated plant remains recovered from rockshelters in the American Southwest (Ford 2003:xii; 2004:x; Pearsall 2000:1) and waterlogged remains from Swiss lake-dwelling sites (Hastorf 1999:55). This field of study, first termed ethno-botany, today is termed either paleoethnobotany or archaeobotany, with the two synonymous terms generally preferred in North America and Europe, respectively (figure 1.1). Paleoethnobotany expanded tremendously as a field in the second half of the twentieth century, as reflected in the growing number of publications since the 1970s (see the extensive bibliographies in Hastorf 1999 and Pearsall 2000), and continues to make substantial contributions to archaeology today.

This volume is conceived as a reflection on the state of the field after the first decade of the twenty-first century. Paleoethnobotany has changed dramatically since its earliest days and since the publication of the first seminal volumes in the 1970s and 1980s (Hastorf and Popper 1988; Pearsall 1989; Renfrew 1973; van Zeist and Casparie 1984; van Zeist et al. 1991). It is time for a new and updated overview of the methods and theory of paleoethnobotany that addresses what we do and why we do it. This volume assembles a diverse group of authors to write about their areas of expertise in the practice and theory of paleoethnobotany. We cover topics from the formation processes of plant remains in the archaeological record to methods for their recovery and analysis to diverse modes of interpretation, both alone and in concert with other types of archaeological analyses.

This book differs from prior contributions to the field in three ways. First, this is the only comprehensive edited volume focusing on method and theory to appear since the 1988 publication of Current Paleoethnobotany (Hastorf and Popper 1988), still an influential and frequently cited volume but now dated in bibliography and without the benefit of technical advances in the field since the 1980s. Due to the high quality of the chapters in that volume, we aim to supplement (rather than replicate) the topics covered in 1988 with new areas of inquiry (e.g., starch grain analysis, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, digital data management, and ecological and postprocessual theory) that have become central to contemporary archaeological debates. Second, we aim for worldwide coverage in the literature referenced, in contrast to many excellent recent volumes that synthesize regional bodies of data and literatures in the Northeastern United States (Hart 1999, 2008), the Eastern United States (Gremillion 1997; Minnis 2003; Scarry 1993b), the Western United States (Minnis 2004), China (Zhao 2010), Africa (van der Veen 1999b), the tropics (Hather 1994), and Europe and the Near East (van Zeist and Casparie 1984; van Zeist et al. 1991). Finally, although Pearsall's (2000)Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures, currently in its second edition, is a critical reference for all paleoethnobotanists (as well as archaeologists of other specialties), its focus lies on providing a broad overview of methods in the discipline, rather than a critical examination of particular areas of study. This volume, in contrast, includes chapters that focus narrowly on individual topics and assesses the current state of theoretical, methodological, and empirical work in each area. We intend for this book to be used alongside the seminal works listed above, as well as myriad monographs and articles, and to serve as the next milestone along the path of paleoethnobotanical knowledge.

This chapter serves two purposes: it reviews briefly the state of the field to date and it suggests future directions in paleoethnobotany. Rather than list or summarize the other chapters in this volume, we reference them within this discussion to show how the questions addressed in subsequent chapters fit into the overall trajectory of both recent advances and predicted future trends in the field. Paleoethnobotany is poised at the intersection between study of the past and concerns of the present, including food security, biodiversity, and global environmental change, and has much to offer to archaeology, anthropology, and interdisciplinary studies of human relationships with the natural world. This volume, as a whole, illustrates many of these connections and highlights the increasing relevance of the study of past human-plant interactions for understanding the present and future (cf. van der Leeuw and Redman 2002).

The Development of Paleoethnobotany

The State of the Field in the 1980s

The state of the field of paleoethnobotany through the 1980s is well summarized by books published late in that decade (Hastorf and Popper 1988; Pearsall 1989; van Zeist et al. 1991) and need not be repeated here (see Ford 2003, 2004; Hastorf 1999:55 — 57; Pearsall 2000:1 — 10; Popper and Hastorf 1988; Renfrew 1973:1 — 6 for excellent summaries of this period). Early work in the field stemmed from chance finds of desiccated or waterlogged plant remains in archaeological contexts, the analysis of which first began in the late nineteenth century and continued through the 1960s (Pearsall 2000:4 — 6). The major tipping point for the study of paleoethnobotanical remains was the application of flotation to recover carbonized plant remains from archaeological sediments, a technique suitable for a wide variety of archaeological contexts. First publicized to the American archaeological community in 1968 (Struever 1968), flotation rapidly became adopted for use at an increasing number of sites across the Americas, Europe, and the Near East (Pearsall 2000:4 — 6). Coupled with the expansion of large salvage archaeology projects in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s (henceforth termed Cultural Resource Management, or CRM, projects), massive botanical data sets were recovered using flotation, studied, and published, driving the need for comprehensive methodological treatments of paleoethnobotany (i.e., Hastorf and Popper 1988; Pearsall 1989) that went beyond prior works that were more narrowly concerned with identification and interpretation of cultigens (e.g., Renfrew 1973; van Zeist and Casparie 1984).

Pearsall's (1989) and Hastorf and Popper's (1988) volumes had two far-reaching implications for paleoethnobotanical research in the 1990s and beyond. First, they popularized the study of plant remains as a theoretically grounded discipline that had the potential to address a variety of research questions. Chapters dealing with formation processes (Asch and Sidell 1988; Pearsall 1988), agricultural activities (Hastorf 1988), paleoenvironmental reconstruction (Smart and Hoffman 1988), and culture change (Johannessen 1988) highlight some of the applications of paleoethnobotanical data sets. Second, these books explained the recovery of plant remains in a way accessible to the general population of archaeologists (Toll 1988; Wagner 1988; and especially Pearsall 1989:chapter 2) and dealt with the basic quantitative methods employed in paleoethnobotanical analysis (Miller 1988; Pearsall 2000:chapter 3; Popper 1988). These references, and in particular the second edition of Pearsall's book, continue to be consulted by archaeologists during excavation as a "how-to" guide for the recovery of plant remains, especially when a paleoethnobotanist is not available to oversee sample collection and processing in the field. Undoubtedly these texts have contributed to the expansion of flotation and paleoethnobotanical analysis since the late 1980s.

Trends in Paleoethnobotanical Analysis since 1989

We identify seven trends that have occurred in paleoethnobotany since the late 1980s, leading to significant changes in the field today. We briefly outline these trends, and their implications, in this section. These trends include (1) improved understanding of the formation and depositional processes that affect botanical macro-and microremains; (2) improved methods for and frequency of paleoethnobotanical sampling, of both macro- and microremains; (3) new methods for quantification; (4) advances in computing and digital technologies, which have enabled new methods of interpretation; (5) the application of new theoretical approaches to the analysis of paleoethnobotanical remains; (6) the integration of paleoethnobotany with other methods of environmental archaeology; and (7) the increasingly mainstream role of paleoethnobotanical analyses and specialists within archaeological discourse. These trends are the result of a steady accumulation of knowledge within the field of paleoethnobotany, the increased number of trained paleoethnobotanists, and broader changes in the field of archaeology that have benefited paleoethnobotanical analysis.

Improved Understanding of Formation and Depositional Processes

Basic research continues on the processes that affect the deposition, decay, and preservation of botanical remains in a variety of archaeological contexts. These processes have not been a primary focus of earlier texts in the field (but see Pearsall 2000; Piperno 2006b; Torrence and Barton 2006). Five chapters in this book summarize recent advances in our understanding of the chemical, physical, and biological processes that affect botanical preservation at the macroscopic, microscopic, and biomolecular levels. Gallagher (chapter 2, this volume) describes both cultural and natural processes that affect the patterning of macrobotanical remains. Henry (chapter 3, this volume) and Pearsall (chapter 4, this volume), in contrast, focus on the physical and chemical structure of botanical microremains (starch grains, and pollen and phytoliths, respectively) and recent experimental work that gives insight into how and why certain microremains may be preserved (or not) in specific archaeological contexts. Finally, Warinner (chapter 14, this volume) and Wales et al. (chapter 15, this volume) discuss the factors that influence biochemical and biomolecular (DNA, RNA, and protein) preservation in archaeobotanical remains. This basic knowledge has improved the ability of paleoethnobotanists to make claims about the presence and absence of certain taxa at the time of deposition, rather than at the time of analysis.

Improved Paleoethnobotanical Sampling Methods and Increased Sampling Frequency

The "flotation revolution" of the 1970s was responsible for making the collection of plant remains a part of mainstream archaeological fieldwork in many parts of the world, as described above, and sampling has continued to increase ever since. This is mainly the result of the penetration of flotation, and other appropriate methods for recovering botanical remains, into parts of the world where such work was not previously practiced. Archaeologists in South and East Asia and Africa, in particular, have only recently begun to adopt flotation on a large scale (e.g., Crawford 2006, 2009; D'Andrea et al. 2001; D'Andrea 2008; Di Piazza 1998; Fairbairn 2007; Fuller 2006; Fuller and Weber 2005; Gallagher 2010; Kajale 1991; Lee et al. 2007; Logan 2012; McConnell and O'Connor 1997; Neumann et al. 2003; van der Veen 1999b; Zhao 2010). Improvements in the identification and interpretation of microremains (here phytoliths and starch grains) from archaeological contexts, especially in tropical soils where macroremains are poorly preserved, have further expanded our understanding of plant use on a global scale (Denham et al. 2003; Fahmy 2008; Fahmy and Magnavita 2006; Pearsall 2000: chapter 5; Piperno 2006a, 2009; Piperno and Holst 1998; Torrence and Barton 2006). The availability of methods guides for sampling both macro-and microremains (Fritz 2005; Pearsall 2000; Piperno 2006b; Torrence and Barton 2006) has further increased the ubiquity of such sampling. D'Alpoim Guedes and Spengler (chapter 5, this volume) and White and Shelton (chapter 6, this volume) address recent trends in methods for sampling and recovering paleoethnobotanical remains, including recent improvements in flotation device efficiency and portability, such as the hand-pump flotation device (Shelton and White 2010).

New Methods in Quantification

An increase in computing technology and the development of statistical software programs have allowed major contributions to the quantification and interpretation of archaeological plant remains through multivariate statistics, especially correspondence analysis and various derivative methods (see discussion in A. Smith, chapter 10, this volume). These methods extract significant axes of variation from large and complex data sets and can be used for the direct integration of plant and animal remains from an archaeological site (VanDerwarker 2010a). The interpretation of multivariate statistics remains subjective and such statistical methods are not appropriate for every data set (Jones 1991). Multivariate approaches, however, have been essential to new advances in understanding large-scale patterning of archaeological plant remains at both the sitewide and regional scales (e.g., Colledge et al. 2004; Jones et al. 2010; Peres et al. 2010; Smith and Munro 2009; Torrence et al. 2004; van der Veen 1992a, 2007b; VanDerwarker 2006).

Improvements have also been made in the use of simple (i.e., non-multivariate) statistics and their applications to interpretation of paleoethnobotanical assemblages, especially related to hypothesis testing (see Marston, chapter 9, this volume). Such applications extend to the interpretation of both intrasite (VanDerwarker et al., chapter 11, this volume) and intersite (Stevens, chapter 12, this volume) variation in the deposition of plant remains.

Advances in Computing and Digital Technologies

Perhaps no change over the past thirty years has affected archaeology as much as the exponential increase in computing power and the increased availability and usability of digital imaging on devices ranging from microscopes to multispectral satellites. As Warinner and d'Alpoim Guedes (chapter 8, this volume) discuss, these advances have had profound implications for the field of paleoethnobotany by enhancing our ability to record, store, sort, analyze, publish, and share the results of our analyses. Powerful desktop and portable computers make possible the widespread use of multivariate statistics, as described above, and spatial analysis, including the analysis of remotely sensed data (Casana, chapter 16, this volume). Online archives have enabled unprecedented sharing of data and publications (Warinner and d'Alpoim Guedes, chapter 8, this volume) and enhance the utility of reference collections (e.g., botanical collections imaged and available online in high resolution; Fritz and Nesbitt, chapter 7, this volume). Computing advances have also greatly enhanced other areas of science, such as genomics, that have had tremendous implications for paleoethnobotany (Londo et al. 2006; Olsen and Schaal 1999; Smith 2001a, 2014; Smith and Zeder 2013; Zeder, Bradley, et al. 2006; Zeder, Emshwiller, et al. 2006; see also Wales et al., chapter 15, this volume).

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 160732315X
• ISBN 13: 9781607323150
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Marston John M., D'Alpoim Guedes Jade, Warinner Christina