Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: The only book you need on the subject
Review: For nearly 40 years as the field of paleoethnobotany (first defined by Helbeak in 1959) emerged as a discipline, many workers in, and out of that field lamented the absence of a good textbook that would provide an overview of the discipline, offer guidelines and answers for students' questions about how and where to sample, and would discuss the many different sorting and analytical approaches that were being developed and tested. As Helbeak originally stated, "Paleoethnobotany...is the analysis and interpretation of the direct interrelationships between humans and plants...as manifested in the archaeological record." Thus, the primary emphasis of the discipline remains the analysis of botanical materials found in archaeological sites.
In 1989, Pearsall partly solved the problem with the publication of the first edition of her book, Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures. That edition had large print, was well illustrated, and the book was 470 pages long. It provided an excellent beginning point but as the author later admitted, the first edition was heavily weighted toward examples taken from sites in the New World, it contained significant imbalances among the chapters (i.e., especially in her brief discussion of pollen), and she acknowledged the accidental omission of some important primary source data. All of those problems have been thoroughly corrected in the second edition. The current edition is 700 pages long, has much smaller print, is much better illustrated, and has over 1,500 entries in the bibliography. Yes, that is correct, 1,500 citations, that is not a typo!
The book contains a wealth of information and it is the best overall source for information on the subject of paleoethnobotanical currently in print. The book begins with an excellent opening chapter on the history and development of paleoethnobotany as a discipline, details the progress and growing acceptance of this technology during the last century, and discusses the current and potential future status of the discipline. That chapter is followed by two extensive chapters on botanical macro remains (i.e., seeds, leaves, wood, charcoal, fibers, fruits, roots, tubers, etc.). The first of these two chapters examines the many ways to correctly recover plant remains, where to search for them, how to preserve them once they are found, and how to test your sampling techniques to ensure that you are not contaminating your samples. The second chapter is an excellent look at how to analyze, tabulate, and then interpret what messages one can glean from various types of plant macro remains. Other chapters in the book take a comprehensive look at topics that include the importance and role of phytoliths (plant crystals) in documenting the past use of plants by humans; how pollen studies have provided critical documentation about past interactions between humans and plant resources; and in the last two chapters she takes an extensive look at what she calls the "indicators of diet and health." The author devotes two chapters to this last topic. In the first she examines how one can use various types of primary data to formulate an overall image of past plant use, while In the second she documents the importance of searching for and then using indirect indicators of diet and health, when such evidence is available. Some of these indirect indicators include evidence found in coprolites (i.e., fossil feces), isotopes, trace elements, and nonspecific indicators of stress in a population (i.e., dental caries and tooth loss, dental enamal patterns showing hypoplasia and Harris lines, porotic hyperostosis in bones, and bone robustness).
Because I have a special interest in pollen studies, I was especially interested in her chapter on the use of palynology in paleoethnobotany. As I was reading the chapter it felt as if I were reading the opening chapters of a standard introductory textbook in palynology. Dr. Pearsall offers fairly detailed discussions of a range of topics that include pollen formation, dispersal techniques, morphology types, pollen keys, pollen distribution, and pollen preservation. She then launches into thorough discussions of pollen sampling techniques (both modern and fossil), offers a detailed look at current types of pollen processing techniques, recommends types of slide mounting procedures, suggests ways to count pollen and tracer spores, how and why to use tracer spores, and finally she details many of the problems one can encounter when trying to identify damaged or corroded pollen grains in fossil sediments. She concludes her discussion of palynology with some excellent case studies that document some of the many ways pollen data can be used and then focuses on the problems that can be encountered during the analysis and later interpretation of pollen counts. I was also pleased to see that she strongly recommends caution against "over interpretations" of the pollen data. Finally, she explores a number of statistical techniques that are currently used to interpret pollen data, define pollen biozones, and correlate stratigraphic sequences. Best of all, her chapter summary of the pollen chapter entitled, "Issues and Directions in Archaeological Pollen Analysis," should be required reading for all archaeologists who want to, or plan to, or who are even considering collecting pollen data from sites that they might excavate. That final section very effectively summarizes many of the critical points that palynologists have been trying to convey to archaeologists for decades!
The book's bibliographical section is extensive. I spent several hours just reading the many entries in that section and marking some of the more interesting citations that I want to look up and read at a later date. I was especially amazed by the breadth of the many references she included in each of the chapters.
Overall, there are a few minor typos and some minor errors in some of the various chapters that could be corrected if there is to be a third edition, but none of these are serious flaws. Furthermore, I doubt that most students or professionals who read the book will even notice many of these minor errors . There are a number of photo micrographs in the book yet many do not include an indication of relative size even though they are pictured at different magnifications. A scale for many of those pictures would have been appreciated.
The bottom line is that this is an amazing book and it is well worth the cost. I encourage its purchase as soon as possible. The original, first edition of this book, if I recall correctly, was as least as expensive as the current second edition, if not more expensive. That was 11 years ago, so in today's dollars the current edition is a bargain. For any botanist who plans to interact and work with archaeologists, or who wants his/her research to be recognized and used by paleoethnobotanists, this book is an essential purchase. The book should also become an essential reference source for any archaeologist planning to begin any type of field work.

Rating:
Summary: paleoethnobotany, a handbook of procedures
Review: This new edition of the definitive work on "doing paleoethnobotany" follows the steady growth in the quantity and sophistication of paleoethnobotanical research. It features a rewritten chapter on phytolith analysis and a new chapter, Integrating Biological Data. It also includes new techniques, such as residue analysis, and new applications of old indicators, such as starch grains. An expanded examination of pollen analysis, more examples of environmental reconstruction, and a better balance of Old and New World examples increase the versatility of this holistic view of paleoethnobotany. Paleoethnobotany, Second Edition presents the diverse approaches and techniques that anthropologists and botanists use to study human-plant interactions. It shows why anthropologists must identify plant remains and understand the ecology of human-plant interactions. Additionally, it demonstrates why botanists need to view the plant world from a cultural perspective and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the archaeological record

Rating:
Summary: paleoethnobotany, a handbook of procedures
Review: This new edition of the definitive work on "doing paleoethnobotany" follows the steady growth in the quantity and sophistication of paleoethnobotanical research. It features a rewritten chapter on phytolith analysis and a new chapter, Integrating Biological Data. It also includes new techniques, such as residue analysis, and new applications of old indicators, such as starch grains. An expanded examination of pollen analysis, more examples of environmental reconstruction, and a better balance of Old and New World examples increase the versatility of this holistic view of paleoethnobotany. Paleoethnobotany, Second Edition presents the diverse approaches and techniques that anthropologists and botanists use to study human-plant interactions. It shows why anthropologists must identify plant remains and understand the ecology of human-plant interactions. Additionally, it demonstrates why botanists need to view the plant world from a cultural perspective and understand the strengths and weaknesses of the archaeological record