Methodological Issues in Paleoethnobotany: A consideration of Issues, Methods, and Cases

Wright, Patti J.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-0935-0_3

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…The density approach is related to a more conservative measure of abundance: ubiquity, commonly used in archaeobotany and occasionally in zooarchaeology (Popper 1988;Wright 2010;McKechnie and Moss 2016; see also Lyman 2008, 114-119). Defined as the proportion of samples, stratigraphic entities, or even sites containing a given taxon, ubiquity is particularly useful for finds categories whose distribution tends to be extremely patchy, in the sense that finds often occur in dense concentrations that would cause instability in results using fully quantitative measures.…”

Section: Monte Carlo Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catch Per Unit Research Effort: Sampling Intensity, Chronological Uncertainty, and the Onset of Marine Fish Consumption in Historic London

Orton

Morris²,

Pipe

2017

Open Quaternary

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As the cumulative volume of ecofactual data from archaeological sites mounts, the analytical tools required for its synthesis have not always kept pace. While recent attention has been devoted to spatial aspects of meta-analysis, the methodological challenges of chronological synthesis have been somewhat neglected. Nowhere is this issue more acute than for urban sites, where complex, well-dated stratigraphy; rich organic remains; and multiple small-to medium-scale excavations often lead to an abundance of small datasets with cross-cutting phasing and varied chronological resolution. Individually these may be of limited value, but together they can represent the environmental and socioeconomic history of a city. The challenge lies in developing tools for effective synthesis.This paper demonstrates a new approach to chronological meta-analysis of ecofactual data, based upon (a) use of simulation to deal with dating uncertainty, and (b) calibration of results for variable research intensity. We apply this approach to a large body of historic-period fish bone data from London, revealing otherwise undetectable detail regarding one of the most profound shifts in medieval English economic and environmental history: the sudden onset of marine fishing commonly known as the Fish Event Horizon. Most importantly, we show that this phenomenon predates any visible decline in deposition of freshwater fish, and hence cannot have been driven by depletion of inland fisheries as has sometimes been suggested.The R package developed for this research, archSeries, is freely available.Keywords: zooarchaeology; meta-analysis; medieval fishing; environmental history; chronological uncertainty; urban archaeology; fish bones; aoristic analysis; Fish Event Horizon; sampling intensity IntroductionRecent decades have seen widespread recovery and analysis of a wide suite of ecofactual remains from archaeological sites, particularly in territories with systematic frameworks and guidance for development-led archaeology. As the cumulative volume of ecofactual data has mounted, however, the analytical tools required for its synthesis across space and time have not always kept pace. While recent attention has been devoted to spatial aspects of meta-analysis, particularly through increasingly sophisticated applications of GIS (see e.g. Livarda and Orengo 2015; McKechnie and Moss 2016), the methodological and statistical challenges of chronological synthesis have been somewhat neglected.Nowhere is this issue more acute than for urban archaeological sites. A typical combination of complex, well-dated stratigraphy, rich organic remains, and multiple small-to medium-scale excavations often leads to an abundance of small datasets with cross-cutting phasing and varied chronological resolution. Separately, many of these datasets are of limited value; together they can represent the environmental and socio-economic history of a city. The quality of excavation and documentation in this context is often very high, but the resources available for subsequent a...

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Section: Monte Carlo Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catch Per Unit Research Effort: Sampling Intensity, Chronological Uncertainty, and the Onset of Marine Fish Consumption in Historic London

Orton

Morris²,

Pipe

2017

Open Quaternary

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“…The field of archaeobotany (aka paleoethnobotany) has produced new information about the history of human plant use in prehistory (Fritz, 2005;Hastorf & Popper, 1988;Hather, 2010;Pearsall, 2000Pearsall, , 2007Piperno, 2006;Piperno & Pearsall, 1998;Wright, 2010). But there are still serious empirical problems hampering understanding of the early history of plant domestication that need to be sorted out before there can by any definitive patterns to compare and interpret (Fritz, 2005;Langlie, Mueller, Spengler, & Fritz, 2014).…”

Section: Epistemology Of Early Agriculture In the Tropical Lowlandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6, No. 1;2017 lower levels in sites, some plants, like maize, were been widely and intensively cultivated in late prehistory and historic times, so there's the potential for their remains to get from the surface into archaeological sites. That recent plants remains routinely get into archaeological deposits is show by their ubiquity in soil flotation light fractions.…”

Section: Datingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Method and Theory of Early Farming: The Orinoco and Caribbean Coasts of South America

Roosevelt¹

2016

ESR

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The early and mid 20th century was a time of great interest in the rise of agriculture and its role in the evolution of civilizations societies in particular environments. Late 20th century efforts to reconstruct the nature and history of prehistoric farming societies in the northern lowlands of South America ranged from expansive hypotheses to regional case studies using archaeobotanical technologies then available. Since 2000, a large number of regional studies using expanded and refined methods have produced broadly interesting results. Approaches from the fields of geography and earth sciences are being recruited increasingly. The resulting empirical evidence does shed light on aspects of the history of human use of some plants but, as always, has raised more questions than it solved. Many of the problems interpreting the processual and evolutionary significance of these findings are methodological ones. This article reviews what seem to be the most important methodological and interpretive issues of this area of research for the tropical lowlands (up to c. 1500 m a.s.l) of northern South America.

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“…O uso da técnica de flotação na recuperação de rem anescentes vegetais em sítios arqueológicos no Brasil tornou-se freqüente nos últimos anos, devido, em grande parte, aos avanços produzidos na m etodologia em pregada em contextos variados, em diferentes regiões do m undo (Pearsall 2000, Struever 1968, Wright 2010. N o Brasil, a partir dos anos 90, a produção de trabalhos científicos incentivou o desenvolvim ento das técnicas e m etodologias em pregadas pelos pesquisadores em diversas regiões, contribuindo para o conhecim ento acerca dos variados contextos apresentados (Scheel-Ybert et al 2005-6).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Methodology used in the recovery of plant macro-remains from three archaeological sites in the Central Amazon region

Silva¹

2011

Rev. Mus. Arqueol. Etnol. Supl.

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Amostras de sedimento coletadas em escavações realizadas em três sítios arqueológicos localizados na região da Amazônia Central foram processadas a partir da técnica de flotação, descrita na literatura e adaptada conforme a necessidade apresentada. Os resultados preliminares demonstraram a eficiência do método para a recuperação de macro-restos vegetais e suas potencialidades para os estudos paleoetnobotânios

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Methodological Issues in Paleoethnobotany: A consideration of Issues, Methods, and Cases

Cited by 25 publications

References 84 publications

Catch Per Unit Research Effort: Sampling Intensity, Chronological Uncertainty, and the Onset of Marine Fish Consumption in Historic London

Catch Per Unit Research Effort: Sampling Intensity, Chronological Uncertainty, and the Onset of Marine Fish Consumption in Historic London

Method and Theory of Early Farming: The Orinoco and Caribbean Coasts of South America

Methodology used in the recovery of plant macro-remains from three archaeological sites in the Central Amazon region

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