Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
Anna Florin, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, anna.florin@anu.edu.au
Julian Garay-Vazquez, Archaeology and History Department, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK, J.J.Garay-Vazquez@exeter.ac.uk
Makayla Harding, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, makayla.harding@uq.net.au
David Doyle, Menindee Aboriginal Elders Council, Kinchega National Park, Menindee, Australia, Dave.Doyle.Creative@gmail.com
Emily Grey, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, emily.grey@research.uwa.edu.au
Sinyati Robinson Mark, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, s.robinsonmark@uq.net.au
Madonna Thomson, Jagera Daran Community and Heritage Solutions, Brisbane, Australia, Madonna.Thomson@jageradaran.com
Archaeobotanical research plays a key role in understanding the history of relationships between people, plants, environments, and food production globally. However, like other archaeological subdisciplines, archaeobotany was developed in Europe and Southwest Asia within a Western Enlightenment framework of cultural evolution. Key definitions, concepts, and methodologies shaped by modern Eurocentric understandings of plants, people, and the environment have been applied globally. This has narrowed the perspectives that inform archaeobotanical research and reduced the input of local communities with knowledge systems outside the Western scientific tradition into the study of their heritage. This session invites speakers working on regions outside Europe and Southwest Asia and incorporating non-Western perspectives to discuss their understandings of plants in the past and present, including how archaeobotanical research can be used to support sustainable food futures. We aim to celebrate and explore the diversity of people-plant interactions and how these can be understood beyond the constraints and legacies of colonial practices. We especially welcome Indigenous speakers and Autochthonous community members to share their experiences, research, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge to disrupt the status quo of the discipline.
Papers:
Who We Are, Where We Are, What Do Plants Mean to Us, Why Archaeology?
Samantha Blinco, Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation, Australia
Makayla Harding, The University of Queensland, Australia
Mithaka people are from far southwestern Queensland in a pristine Channel Country within the Lake Eyre Kati-Thanda Basin and an arid boom and bust climate with low rainfall and seemingly less vegetation. Despite this, there is a rich ethnobotanical record describing the relationships between plants and people on Country. It is well documented that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have lost a lot due to the effects of colonisation and Mithaka people are no exception. This paper will explore some of the ways in which our people are reinvigorating knowledge and culture using ethnographic recounts of plant use in the region in order to tell our story and preserve it for future generations. Further, this presentation will be presented by a Mithaka person, supported by Mithaka people which will contain ethnobotanical recording and comparing this to literature and archaeobotany. With this reinvigorated knowledge, Mithaka people will have a way of telling our holistic story on Mithaka plant use.
The Ancient Art of the Maya Forest Garden: A Mythologised Past and Uncertain Future
Anabel Ford, Exploring Solutions Past: The Maya Forest Alliance
Cynthia Ellis Topsey, Exploring Solutions Past: The Maya Forest Alliance
Tropical forests are regularly dismissed as fragile landscapes, inadequate for sustaining large populations without damaging impacts. Yet long-surviving Indigenous land use practices, involving sophisticated understandings of natural regeneration, forest ecology, and the rewards of managing land cover, demonstrate remarkable abilities in the tropical latitudes. People in the tropics of Mesoamerica exhibit the art of enduring practices based on honed skills, trial and error, creative strategies, and local methods that support all the daily needs of food and shelter. It is the architecture and the forest itself that are the rich evidence that is the example of the Maya milpa-forest-garden cropscape. This is a case worthy of discussion of the living art embedded in traditional ecological knowledge that provided the foundation of the ancient Maya civilisation.
Settlement Pattern and Plant Use in Río Chico and Colina Boayacu Puyu, Upper Valley of the Pastaza River
Ferran Cabrero, Professor and researcher, Universidad Estatal Amazónica, Puyo, Ecuador
Río Chico and Colina Boayacu Puyu are two archaeological sites in the upper basin of the Pastaza River, in present-day Ecuador, that help to understand how the ancient inhabitants of the Upper Amazon lived. Rio Chico is important for having unique crops in the basin since Regional Development, and for being today the oldest mountain village in this area, about 2000 years BC, inserting it in the same way in the Formative. Furthermore, the fact of having Puruhá ceramics can show long-distance exchanges between the ends of Regional Development and the Integration Period. Close to the latter, the so-called Hill or ‘Tola Boayacu Puyu’, on the banks of the Puyo River, a tributary of the Pastaza, is of equal importance: with diverse ceramics associated with different periods, and with remarkable paleobotanical remains, it confirms a type of use of land and a certain Amazonian ‘urbanism’ that was already announced by nearby sites like Té Zulay. Both Río Chico and Boayacu Puyu Hill are framed in the idea of Amazonian monumentality, especially in the edge of the jungle, and of a common settlement pattern in the Upper Pastaza.
Fibre Technologies in Southeast Cape York Peninsula, Australia
Lynley A. Wallis, Griffith University, Australia
Heather Burke, Archaeology, Flinders University, Australia
Mia Dardengo, Griffith University, Australia
Chrissy Musgrave, Roseanne George, Sam Lowdown, Sue Marsh and Cliff Callaghan, Laura Land and Sea Rangers
Alexandra Snep, Archaeology, Flinders University, Australia
String has been argued to be a technological innovation that played an important role in human evolution. Indigenous Australians had a vast array of material culture that incorporated string in some fashion, and such items are abundant in ethnographic and museum collections. Yet, owing to its organic nature, with a couple of notable exceptions, string is rarely recovered from Australian archaeological deposits. Here we describe an exceptional assemblage of string from the site of Windmill Way, a ca 2000-year-old rockshelter in southeast Cape York Peninsula. The assemblage comprises an unprecedented ~500 fragments of manufactured plant fibres, many less than 2 cm in length, but also including longer pieces and fragments of structured items such as dilly bags and nets. Detailed study of these objects, and comparison with museum objects collected from the same region, have allowed insights into Aboriginal technologies and lifeways in Quinkan Country during the late Holocene.
Towards the Past, Present and Future of Plant Use on Kinchega National Park, Barkandji Country, Australia
David Doyle, Menindee Aboriginal Elders Council, Kinchega National Park, Menindee, Australia
Barbara Quayle, Menindee Aboriginal Elders Council
Anna Florin, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Australia
Alison Crowther, The University of Queensland, Australia; Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany
Amy Way, School of Humanities, University of Sydney, Australia
Menindee Aboriginal Elders Council, Kinchega National Park Joint Management Program
In this paper we will present the beginnings of a co-created project, developed by archaeobotanists and the Menindee Aboriginal Elders Council in Kinchega National Park, Barkandji Country, northwestern NSW, Australia. The Lower Darling River Basin has been occupied by Barkandji people (‘river people’) for at least 40,000 years (Cupper and Duncan 2017), making it one of the oldest cultural landscapes in Australia. Archaeological research in this area has focused on how Barkandji adapted to this semi-arid environment and fluctuating river system through time, with grass seeds suggested to be a primary focus of past economies (e.g., Allen 1974; Balme 1991). Despite this, no archaeobotanical data has been recovered to date. This means past foodways, including the use of grass seeds and other plants, have not been fully investigated. This project looks to: 1) provide multiple lines of archaeological evidence for past plant use; and 2) to embed this evidence in present Barkandji Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), through the conducting of oral histories and ethnobotanical fieldwork. As such, we look to co-create a narrative of past plant use and adaptation to shifting environment on Barkandji Country, and to generate resources to support future Barkandji research and educational initiatives.
A Meeting of Minds: Puutu Kunti Kurruma Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Archaeobotany of Juukan Gorge
PKKP Aboriginal Corporation, Australia
Elise Matheson, Australian National University and SCARP Archaeology, Australia
Juukan, an archaeological site located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia on Puutu Kunti Kurruma (PKK) land, is renowned for the exceptional preservation of organic remains, including numerous intact hearths. With occupation dating back 47,000 years, Juukan is among the oldest arid-zone sites in Australia. Australian archaeobotanical research has tended to focus of the tropical and subtropical zones, consequently very little is known archaeologically about how Indigenous Australians adapted their plant use strategies to the arid zones of Australia. Juukan provides a unique opportunity to explore the evolution of plant-use strategies in the semi-arid zone. For the PKK people, Juukan is far more than a site of scientific intrigue–it is a place of profound cultural importance, deeply connected to their ancestors. The involvement of PKK senior Traditional Ecological Knowledge holders in ongoing research is critical. Elders’ expertise in plant foods and medicines enriches the archaeobotanical research, infusing plant identifications with knowledge that has been passed down through generations. This talk will explore preliminary evidence from the archaeobotanical research at Juukan and highlight the importance of cross-cultural collaboration in advancing our understanding of past human-plant interactions.
Using Archaeobotany to Revision Caribbean Indigenous Extinction Narratives
Jose Julian Garay-Vazquez, Dept of Archaeology and History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
The Great Dying refers to the decline of Amerindian communities, an event so transformative that it has even been proposed as the start of the Anthropocene. The population decline estimates are constructed with ethnohistoric ‘census’ data from documents written by colonists. The flaw of the estimates is that they do not consider the ethnogenesis of indigenous-descent communities in marron enclaves. Such is the case of the Greater Antillean Arawak (today known as Taino), which is assumed to become extinct by the mid-16th century. Despite the assumed extinction, numerous people claim Taino descent across the Greater Antilles, exalting their intermixed heritage as people who survived colonial violence. Novel genomic studies support claims of Taino descent by demonstrating that some contemporary population possesses Taino genetics, particularly those from Puerto Rico. However, the genomic data is too limited and does not show direct descent, with a gap highlighted between the 17th and 18th centuries. The present paper aims to address this gap using archaeobotanical evidence from the case study of Vistas del Oceano in Loiza, Puerto Rico. A site previously denominated precolonial, but from which new radiocarbon dates evidence a proto historic occupation that challenges Taino extinction.
Why is a Storm cloud like a Gumleaf?
Craig Hunter Torrens,
This paper explores the integration of Indigenous science concepts, content, perspectives and pedagogies into a tertiary biology education unit. Using a participatory action research methodology grounded in Indigenous standpoint theory, the study examines how Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge systems can be synthesised to create more inclusive and effective research environments. Drawing on Indigenous ontologies that view Country as pedagogue, the study develops an ecological model of a study that recognises the agency and interconnectedness of human and more-than-human actors in the learning process. Through collaborative curriculum design, implementation and assessment, the project aims to disclose Indigenous epistemologies that have been marginalised by colonial education systems. Qualitative methods, including yarning and narrative inquiry, are combined with quantitative ecological sampling techniques to evaluate emergent learning outcomes. The findings contribute to decolonising science by demonstrating how Indigenous and Western knowledge can be truly braided to enhance conceptual understanding for all. I propose a new paradigm of ‘ecological education’ that celebrates cultural diversity while advancing scientific knowledge, and speak to Country in this work, seeking to resonate what you speak to me.
Challenging Misconceptions about the Trincheras Tradition: A Political Ecology and Paleoethnobotany Approach to Indigenous Resilience and Sustainability
Cinthia M Campos-Hernandez, Postdoctoral Researcher, Dept of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, USA
The Trincheras tradition thrived in the Altar, Magdalena, and Asunción-Concepción valleys of present-day Sonora, México, from 400 to 1450 CE. Early archaeologists, conducting minimal research and failing to observe parallels with their northern neighbours—the Hohokam, known for their kilometres-long irrigation canals—misinterpreted the Trincheras as ‘rural bumpkins’ who had merely adapted to a marginal environment as hunters and gatherers. This study presents a comparative analysis of palaeoecological and paleoethnobotanical records to challenge these early 19th- and 20th-century interpretations. Framed within a political ecology lens, I examine the impact of settler-colonialism and capitalism on the Sonoran Desert, particularly in the Trincheras heartlands. Additionally, I address how this history shaped cultural evolutionary and environmentally deterministic theories about the pre-Hispanic cultures of Northwest Mexico and the U.S. Southwest (NW/SW). By interpreting plant use through an Indigenous perspective, this study underscores the role of human agency and culture in the context of Trincheras tradition plant-use practices. Finally, it challenges conventional notions of borders, positioning the Trincheras Tradition into a broader regional context about agricultural practices in the NW/SW, while highlighting the resilience, sustainability, and adaptability of Indigenous peoples living in the Sonoran Desert, both past and present.
Archaeobotanical Research in Tanzania: its Potential to Contemporary Communities, Limitations and Future Directions
Sinyati Robinson Mark, The University of Queensland, Australia; The University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Cecylia Mgombere, The University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Sarah Walshaw, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Alison Crowther, The University of Queensland, Australia; Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany
Archaeobotanical research in Tanzania is gaining its momentum, with researchers exploring different themes including agriculture and foodways, trade, urbanism, and colonialism. The field offers significant insights that are useful to contemporary Tanzanian communities, especially with regard to food security and climate change. There have been efforts to make archaeobotany a growing field in Tanzania including the establishment of the Archaeobotany Laboratory at the University of Dar es Salaam and the training of local experts. Despite these efforts, archaeobotany in Tanzania is still facing several challenges including limited expertise, facilities and funding, and low community awareness; these hinder the full realisation of practical benefits of archaeobotany to contemporary communities. In this paper, we suggest the addressing of these challenges by increasing funding for archaeobotanical research that will be directed to fieldwork, facilities establishment and capacity building for local experts. We also call for a strong collaboration between archaeobotanists and local communities to derive practical benefits of archaeobotanical research to the contemporary world. Directions for future research could include community engaged projects such as ethnoarchaeology of plant use, documentation of crop varietals, collecting and disseminating recipes for rare or famine foods, and establishing oral history projects around local food traditions and innovations.