[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Hero” _builder_version=”3.22″ custom_padding=”0||30px||false|false”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.26.3″ header_4_line_height=”1.4em”]<\/p>\n
Archaeo-botany is a growing field. Why are we taking such an interest in human plant relationships now? Why Central Asia in particular?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I think the trends in archaeobotany can be attributed to two things right now.\u00a0 The first is improvement in methods \u2013 more archaeologists are employing the basic techniques that recover plant remains from archaeological excavations, and these data are now being met with sophisticated scientific approaches, for example the creation of open-access, global databases, the development of isotopic studies that reconstruct human and animal diets, and advances in the study of ancient plant DNA.\u00a0 So, we can do more and say more about human-plant relationships in the ancient past than ever before.\u00a0 The second influence, of course, is our current concerns about climate change, which raise numerous questions about humanity\u2019s long-term role in the environment. Environmental archaeology generally, and archaeobotany in particular, are useful fields for telling us more about how humans engage the biotic world across time.<\/span><\/p>\n Central Asia is interesting because of its geographic position and cultural heritage \u2013 a region traditionally associated with nomadic peoples where goods and ideas were transferred across the Old World.\u00a0 Central Asia presents a wonderful opportunity to investigate the globalization of agriculture and food in the ancient past, and also to think about the diverse ways humans interact with plants beyond intensive farming.<\/span><\/p>\n What can the plant-people relationship of the past teach us about the future?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n A wonderful question!\u00a0 Archaeology is somewhat unique as a field of study in that it allows empirical observations of the long-term, millennial-scale evolution of human-environment dynamics.\u00a0 No other scientific pursuit can really provide that.\u00a0 So, in that sense, if we want to know how human environmental behaviors, for example, deforestation, might impact an ecosystem hundreds or thousands of years later, archaeology (and archaeobotany) can help to answer that question.\u00a0 Archaeology and archaeobotany also tell us about the diversity of human environmental behaviors in the past \u2013 different production systems that supported ancient communities, food staples that were critical in the past that we no longer utilize, and the ways people adapted in innovative ways to ecosystem change.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think these are necessarily practices that we can simply adopt in today\u2019s world and expect similar outcomes, but they do tell us something about our capacities for adaptation and survival.<\/span><\/p>\n How do plant remains help us trace globalization?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n If you know the origins of globally-distributed crops, then you can use archaeological plant remains to trace their pathways of distribution through time.\u00a0 For example, we know that wheat and barley were domesticated in the Near East, and millet and rice in China.\u00a0 At some point, these cereal crops made their way across the Asian continent to the populations on the other side.\u00a0 When?\u00a0 Plant remains recovered from archaeological sites, with their corresponding radiocarbon dates, tell us when the groups in the middle acquired these resources and when they were first transmitted to new environments.\u00a0 The plants thus serve as a kind of metric for the globalization of at least one form of human culture \u2013 food.\u00a0 A more interesting set of questions is how and why these cultural globalizations happened, but this is far more complicated to answer!<\/span><\/p>\n What does the story of tomato tell us about globalization? And about the dwindling number of plant species that we consume?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n To my mind, the story of the tomato is one that reminds us that human and plant diversity do not disappear under globalization.\u00a0 Yes, the vast majority of the tomatoes grown and consumed worldwide today are hybrid varieties with highly reduced diversity, but heirloom tomato production takes place alongside this commercial production, managed by seed savers and small communities of growers that continually innovate to produce novel forms.\u00a0 The diversity of heirloom tomatoes matches the diversity of human cultural practices, and this all forms at the local level as people engage in highly varied responses to globalization (the Columbian Exchange that brought tomatoes to the Old World).\u00a0 Of course, we can also say looking at the case of the tomato that humans are equally capable of producing striking uniformities in the natural world from these same cultural processes \u2013 diversity and uniformity under globalization are not mutually exclusive.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Archaeo-botany is a growing field. Why are we taking such an interest in human plant relationships now? Why Central Asia in particular? I think the trends in archaeobotany can be attributed to two things right now.\u00a0 The first is improvement in methods \u2013 more archaeologists are employing the basic techniques that recover plant remains from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nyuad.nyu.edu\/earthumanities\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}