Abstract
For those who are interested in the intersections of environmental archaeology, human ecology, geography, and other fields that contribute to the study of human-environment interactions in the past, ethnobiology provides an intriguing scholarly home. An important feature of ethnobiology that relates to archaeology is that it welcomes the study of past human-environment relationships or paleoethnobiology. From its very beginning, the Journal of Ethnobiology has published papers on paleoenvironments, hunter-gatherer ecology, zooarchaeology, palynology, biological classification and taxonomy, and other diverse topics. Studies in paleoethnobiology offer what philosopher Albert Borgmann (2000) calls a disclosive perspective, meaning that the temporal dimension of perception of human-environmental interactions is stretched well beyond that of a person's lifetime. This perceptual stretching likely has an important influence on the values that frame people's environmental ethic, defined as a system of values for making choices about how to live in relation to the world (e.g., Rolston 1988; see Wolverton and Lyman 2012).
There are two reasons why ethnobiology is a welcoming scholarly community for zooarchaeologists, archaeobotanists, archaeological chemists, and other environmental archaeologists. First, the field's definition focuses on subject matter: people, biota, and environments. Thus, the ethnobiologist can easily embrace a number of temporal and geographic scales and subjects related to biological and cultural diversity, in studies ranging from individuals to landscapes. Second, there is no single way to do ethnobiology; rather, scholars recognize that types of ethnobiological research are diverse and have evolved (Clement 1998; Hunn 2007; Wyndham et al. 2011).
By contrast, debates on method and theory have raged for the last half century in archaeology. Americanist archaeology has a history of dominant paradigms leading up to its current diverse state including processual and post-processual approaches (see summary of this history in O'Brien et al. 2005). Archaeology has consistently revised its definitions to center on how archaeological research ought to be done. The clearest expression of this tendency was Philip Phillips (1955:246–247) famous edict that “archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing,” preceded by Walter Taylor's (1948) dismantling of descriptive cultural history and followed by Lewis Binford's (1962) strong statement that archaeology is anthropology. The perspective of anthropological anthropology continues to dominate the field, centering on definitions of archaeology that describe the proper way to be an archaeologist. There is considerably less debate about what it means to be an ethnobiologist because multiple forms of research and methodological approaches are simply recognized as subject matter—anthropological, archaeological, and ecological inquiry into human-biota interactions in the past.
This special section incorporates seven archaeological papers that represent an array of ethnobiological approaches to archaeology. Jelmer Eerkens and co-authors employ analysis of stable isotopes from Mytilus shell to assess how this animal resource fit into the diets of hunter-gatherers during prehistory in central California. Although their study concerns an important component of paleodiet, it also considers the landscape ecology of hunting and gathering, bringing a compelling geographic perspective to research on shellfish exploitation in this region. Robert Losey and colleagues also analyze stable isotopes to approach landscape-scale human environmental interactions in the Lake Baikal region of Russia. Their research question concerns whether or not two middle Holocene communities with similar diets procured Siberian marmots from the same animal population, which they assessed using analysis of trace elements. Marmot incisors are commonly interred with human burials; the authors found that though the two communities had similar diets, people likely hunted marmots from different areas. Thus, subsistence territories may have overlapped, but ritual use of the landscape seems to have been segregated. The articles by Eerkens et al. and Losey et al. highlight the contributions that research in archaeological chemistry can bring to paleoethnobiology.
Two papers focus on humans as farmers. Simone Riehl presents analysis of stable isotope data as well as a meta-analysis of the archaeobotanical record in the northern and eastern Fertile Crescent that focuses on environmental change as a driver at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. She identifies precipitation as a major factor shaping directions in subsistence. The article by Christopher Roos and colleagues moves the special section into Oceania, particularly Fiji. Their research explores geoarchaeology of changes in swidden agricultural practices after 3000 years ago and associated shifts in landscape ecology, including subsistence change and land degradation. Most ethnobiologists recognize archaeobotanical studies, such as Riehl's, as paleoethnobiological research; the paper by Roos et al. showcases the research potential of geoarchaeology in paleoethnobiology.
William Taylor's research focuses on a more intimate human-biota interaction; the effect of bridle use on osteological development in horses during the late Bronze Age in Mongolia. His paper, in contrast to the others, zooms in to capture the direct impact of individual human behaviors in the past. Moving south to the Qinghai Lake basin of the northeastern Tibetan plateau, Dave Rhode assesses whether or not ecosystem-scale changes in vegetation relate to adoption of pastoralism or to shifts in early and mid-Holocene climate in the region through study of archaeobotanical charcoal and lacustrine pollen records. The final study in this special section by Leslie Reeder-Myers and colleagues is an example of conservation archaeobiology; their research focuses on the sustainable harvest of the oyster fishery in a portion of the Chesapeake estuary. Research by Taylor, Rhode, and Reeder-Myers et al. illustrates the strong foundations of zooarchaeology and archaeobotany in paleoethnobiology.
Ethnobiology offers a unique home for scholarship in environmental archaeology. In contrast to contemporary archaeology, ethnobiology focuses on subject matter of human-environmental interactions and de-emphasizes debates on theory. Rather, particular theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches are employed as tools in paleoethnobiology for pursuing inquiry into long-term changes in human ecology at multiple geographic and temporal scales. The articles in this special section highlight the potential of archaeology as ethnobiology.