Overview

Plants are fundamental to life; they are used by all human groups and most animals. They provide raw materials, vitamins and essential nutrients and we could not survive without them. Yet access to plant use before the Neolithic can be challenging. In some places, plant remains rarely survive and reconstructing plant use in pre-agrarian contexts needs to be conducted using a range of different techniques. This lack of visible evidence has led to plants being undervalued, both in terms of their contribution to diet and as raw materials. This book outlines why the role of plants is required for a better understanding of hominin and pre-agrarian human life, and offers a variety of ways in which this can be achieved. Wild Harvest is divided into three sections. In section 1 each chapter focuses on a specific feature of plant use by humans; this covers the role of carbohydrates, the need for and effects of processing methods, the role of plants in self-medication among apes, plants as raw materials and the extent of evidence for plant use prior to the development of agriculture in the Near East. Section 2 comprises seven chapters which cover different methods available to obtain information on plants, and the third section has five chapters, each covering a topic related to ethnography, ethnohistory or ethnoarchaeology, and how these can be used to improve our understanding of the role of plants in the pre-agrarian past.

Full Product Details

Author:   Karen Hardy ,  Lucy Kubiak-Martens
Publisher:   Oxbow Books
Imprint:   Oxbow Books
Volume:   2
Dimensions:   Width: 17.00cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9781785701238

ISBN 10:   1785701231
Pages:   368
Publication Date:   29 February 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Part 1. Setting the scene 1. Food carbohydrates from plants, by Les Copeland 2. Why protein is not enough: the role of plants and plant processing in meeting human needs for dietary diversity, by Peter J. Butterworth, Peter R. Ellis and Michele Wollstonecroft 3. An ape’s perspective on the origin of medicinal plant use in humans, by Michael Huffman 4. Plants as raw materials, by Karen Hardy 5. Hunter-gatherer plant use in south west Asia: the path to agriculture. Amaia Arranz Juan Jose Ibanez and Lydia Zapata Part 2. Plant foods, tools and people. 6. Scanning Electron Microscopy and starchy food in Mesolithic Europe: the importance of roots and tubers in Mesolithic diet, by Lucy Kubiak-Martens 7. Tools, use wear and experimentation: extracting plants from stone and bone, by Annelou van Gijn and Aimée Little 8. Buccal dental microwear as an indicator of diet in modern and ancient human populations, by Laura Mónica Martínez, Ferran Estebaranz and Alejandro Pérez-Pérez 9. What early human populations ate. The use of phytoliths for identifying plant remains in the archaeological record at Olduvai, by Rosa Maria Albert and Irene Esteban 10. Phytolith evidence of the use of plants as food by Late Natufians at Raqefet Cav, by Robert C Power, Arlene M Rosen and Dani Nadel 11. Evidence of plant foods obtained from the dental calculus of individuals from a Brazilian shell mound, by Célia Helena C. Boyadjian; Sabine Eggers and Rita Scheel-Ybert 12. Stable isotopes and mass spectrometry, by Karen Hardy and Stephen Buckley Part 3. Providing a context: Ethnography, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology 13. Prehistoric fish traps and fishing structures from Zamostje 2, Russian European Plain: Archaeological and ethnographic contexts, by Ignacio Clemente Conte, Vladimir M. Lozovski, Ermengol Gassiot Ballbè, Andrey N. Mazurkevich and Olga V. Lozovskaya 14. Plants and archaeology in Australia, by Sally Brockwell, Janelle Stevenson and Annie Clarke 15. Plentiful scarcity: plant use among Fuegian hunter-gatherers, by Marian Berihuete Azorin, Raquel Piqué Huerta and Maria-Estela Mansur 16. Ethnobotany in evolutionary perspective: wild plants in diet composition and daily use among Hadza hunter-gatherers, by Alyssa N. Crittenden 17. Wild edible plant use among the people of Tomboronkoto, Kédougou region, Senegal, by Mathieu Guèye and Papa Ibra Samb   The development of Neolithic house societies in Orkney: Investigations in the Bay of Firth, Mainland, Orkney (1994–2014), edited by Colin Richards and Richard Jones

Reviews

this book is a noteworthy attempt to bring archaeobotany into the archaeological discourse and is useful for the student, the non-specialised archaeologist and the general reader. --Ines Lopez-Doriga Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (01/01/2017)

This book is a noteworthy attempt to bring archaeobotany into the archaeological discourse and is useful for the student, the non-specialised archaeologist and the general reader. -- Ines Lopez-Doriga Prehistoric Society

Author Information

Karen Hardy is an archaeologist and works for ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Training) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her principal research interests lie in pioneer populations, human adaptations, pre-agrarian diet and plant-based technology.

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