Publication Date

2024

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Bardolph, Dana N.

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Anthropology

Abstract

Paleoethnobotanical analyses over the past several decades have shed light on subsistence practices, agricultural strategies, and environmental interactions of members of the Fort Ancient culture, an Indigenous society that thrived in the Ohio Valley from 1000 to 1650 CE. Largely absent from these conversations, however, are discussions of non-food uses of plants or considerations of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). By combining multiple different sources of knowledge, a more holistic view of people-plant relationships within the Fort Ancient culture may be established, one that allows us to better understand these relationships in the past and present. In this thesis, I synthesize existing literature on Fort Ancient paleoethnobotany and present my analysis of 10 macrobotanical samples from recent excavations at the Fort Ancient Turpin village site (1000 to 1300 CE) in southwest Ohio. I combine the newly analyzed samples with existing data to reinterpret relationships between people and plants, drawing on insights from Native Science and TEK through the perspectives of Native ethnobotanists. I conclude with my goals for a future community-based research program that marshals paleoethnobotanical analysis in the Fort Ancient region in relation to contemporary food sovereignty efforts and ecological reconstructions that have the potential to inform modern conservation protocols.

Extent

83 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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