Use and management of wild fauna by people of the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Valley and surrounding areas, Mexico

Abstract

Background: Interactions between humans and fauna lay in the heart of the history of human subsistence. In Mesoamerica, the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Valley (TCV) harbours a high biodiversity with archaeological and ethnoecological evidence of its use by people inhabiting the area since at least 12,000 B.P. It is recognized as one of the most ancient areas of agriculture in the Americas, and a broad spectrum of management practices aimed to ensure the availability of desirable plants has been documented, but it has not been analysed for animals. This study aimed to investigate the use and management practices directed to wild animals along current settlements within the TCV and neighbouring areas. Methods: We conducted an extensive search, review and analysis of documental sources for the period between 1967 and 2018. We found 38 documents providing information about the presence of animal species and 15 describing their use and/or management. We included our own observations from four case studies among the Ixcatec, Cuicatec, Nahua and Mestizo people, as well as from regional studies of biodiversity. We used unconstrained multivariate data analysis to describe the management typology of the animals in the region. Results: Hitherto, 652 vertebrate species and 765 species of insects have been recorded in this area; and until present, 107 wild animal species have been reported to be used in 11 use-type categories, mostly for food (65.42%), ornamental (27.52%) and medicinal (21.10%) purposes by the Nahua, Cuicatec, Popolocan, Ixcatec, Mazatec and Mestizo people. Their extraction entails manual capture and gathering as well as hunting and trapping strategies, some of them involving planning in time or space and communitarian regulations; in addition, relocation actions and care in captivity were recorded. Nearly 178 of the species distributed in the region with no reports of local use are used in other localities of Mesoamerica. Ethnozoological information is still lacking for the Mixtec, Chinantec and Chocholtec people in the area. Conclusions: Wild fauna is still a valuable resource for the inhabitants of the TCV. Animals are obtained through extractive practices, which vary from one another in their qualitative attributes. With this work, we provide a context for further research priorities on fauna management in a region of high biocultural significance.

Borders as Crossroads: The Diverging Routes of Herbal Knowledge of Romanians Living on the Romanian and Ukrainian Sides of Bukovina

“…The comparison with data from our previous publication ( Mattalia et al, 2020b ) addressing a cross-border comparison among Hutsuls living in Romania and Ukraine showed that 18 taxa were common to the four communities ( Figure 5 ). Some uses were reported by all four Bukovinian communities across the border, including Carum carvi and Hypericum spp.…”

“…The study area is located at the Romanian–Ukrainian border and includes one town on the Romanian side and one main town (including many parishes) on the Ukrainian side. On the European map, “B” indicates the position of Bukovina, and the map of Bukovina depicts our study area in which “R” stands for Romanians and “H” stands for Hutsuls, whose plant-based ethnomedicine is discussed in Mattalia et al (2020b) .…”

“…The same methods as those employed in Mattalia et al (2020b) were used here as both studies were carried out under the framework of the same DIGe project, which looks to assess the influence of centralization and political scenarios on the use of wild plants for medicinal purposes. In this study, 30 interviews were conducted in each area (one interview in Southern Bukovina was discarded as the interviewee was selling medicinal products made using only knowledge derived from books).…”

“…A few plant-based ethnomedicinal studies have been carried out in the Carpathian Mountains, specifically among Hungarian minorities ( Papp et al, 2014a ; Papp et al, 2014b ), Hutsuls ( Sõukand and Pieroni 2016 ; Mattalia et al, 2020b ), and Boykos ( Pieroni and Sõukand 2017 ), as has a historical perspective on ethnomedicine at the Polish–Ukrainian border ( Kozlowska et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Within this framework, the aim of this study was to compare plant-based medicinal uses among Romanians living across the Romanian–Ukrainian border and to perform cross-cultural and cross-border analysis with the ethnomedicine of neighboring Hutsuls ( Mattalia et al, 2020b ) to assess whether Romanians share more medicinal knowledge with Hutsuls living in the same country (Ukraine or Romania) or with Romanians living on the other side of the border.…”