Paleoethnobotany ─ A Handbook of Procedures

This new edition of the definitive work on doing paleoethnobotany brings the book up to date by incorporating new methods and examples of research, while preserving the overall organization and approach of the book to facilitate its use as a textbook. In addition to updates on the comprehensive discussions of macroremains, pollen, and phytoliths, this edition includes a chapter on starch analysis, the newest tool in the paleoethnobotanist's research kit. Other highlights include updated case studies; expanded discussions of deposition and preservation of archaeobotanical remains; updated historical overviews; new and updated techniques and approaches, including insights from experimental and ethnoarchaeological studies; and a current listing of electronic resources. Extensively illustrated, this will be the standard work on paleoethnobotany for a generation.

Deborah M. Pearsall, Professor Emerita, University of Missouri, Department of Anthropology. Recently retired from MU after 35 years, Debby Pearsall holds a BA from the University of Michigan and MA and PhD from the University of Illinois, all degrees in anthropology. Her interests within this discipline center on South American archaeology and paleoethnobotany--the study of people-plant interrelationships through the archaeological record. She has conducted paleoethnobotanical research in numerous locations in the Americas. Her research has two broad themes: the origins and spread of agriculture in the lowland Neotropics, and methods and approaches in paleoethnobotany. She is the author of three books, Paleoethnobotany. A Handbook of Procedures; Plants and People in Ancient Ecuador: The Ethnobotany of the Jama River Valley; and Piperno and Pearsall, The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics, and was the general editor of Academic Press’s 2008 Encyclopedia of Archaeology. She has published in numerous professional journals and edited books.