Paleoethnobotanical remains from basketry and cordage from the Paisley Caves offer an opportunity to explore how people engaged with plant communities over time. Fiber identification of textiles, together with radiocarbon dating, contributes new information about landscape use within the Summer Lake Basin. Expanded marshlands during the terminal Pleistocene / Early Holocene created suitable plant communities ideal for fiber technology, specifically wetland monocots and herbaceous dicots—including dogbane and stinging nettle—by 11,000 years ago. This technology is key to subsistence activities and craft production throughout the Holocene. Despite climatic events during the Middle Holocene, in which people transitioned from caves to sites centered on lakeshores and wetlands, the suite of fiber plants and their technological application remains constant. During the Late Holocene, bast fiber material diversified with the addition of flax and milkweed. The presence of flax in particular, a high-elevation plant, may reflect the increased use of upland root collection areas as populations increased. This research provides long-term data on culturally significant native plants used in the manufacture of fiber-based textiles over the last 14,000 years.

The Tiwanaku civilization (around AD 500–1100) originated in the Bolivian altiplano of the south-central Andes and established agrarian colonies (AD 600–1100) in the Peruvian coastal valleys. Current dietary investigations at Tiwanaku colonial sites focus on maize, a coastal valley cultivar with ritual and political significance. Here, we examine Tiwanaku provincial foodways and ask to what degree the Tiwanaku settlers maintained their culinary and agrarian traditions as they migrated into the lower-altitude coastal valleys to farm the land. We analyze archaeobotanical remains from the Tiwanaku site of Cerro San Antonio (600 m asl) in the Locumba Valley and compare them to data from the Tiwanaku site in the altiplano and the Rio Muerto site in the Moquegua Valley during the period of state expansion. Our findings show high proportions of wild, weedy, and domesticated Amaranthaceae cultivars, suggesting that Tiwanaku colonists grew traditional high-valley (2,000–3,000 m asl) and altiplano (3,000–4,000 m asl) foods on the lowland frontier because of their established cultural dietary preferences and Amaranthaceae's ability to adapt to various agroclimatic and edaphic conditions.

Archaeologists working in the Late Formative Lake Titicaca Basin have identified several “transit communities”—villages that benefited from long-distance exchange. Some scholars suggest that such places played a key role in the development of the Middle Horizon city of Tiwanaku. In this article, we explore the movement of plant goods into transit communities during both the Late Formative (300 BC–AD 500) and Middle Horizon (AD 600–1100) periods. After presenting the current understanding of transit communities, we summarize previous work on both local plants, including tubers and quinoa, and the presence of maize. We then report on a recent microbotanical study of ceramics recovered from excavations at Late Formative Challapata (in the eastern basin) and a burial from the Middle Horizon occupation at Chiripa (in the southern basin). For the first time we identify lowland tubers in the Lake Titicaca Basin, including yuca, sweet potato, and arrowroot. These findings reveal the critical importance of microbotanical analyses for tracing regional connections and foodways in emergent Middle Horizon worlds, as well as the need for more complex interpretive models for things/plants-in-motion.

Recent research at Jaketown, a Late Archaic earthwork site in the Lower Mississippi Valley, suggests that the culture-historical framework used to interpret Jaketown and contemporary sites in the region obscures differences in practices across sites. As an alternative, we propose a framework focused on variation in material culture, architecture, and foodways between Jaketown and Poverty Point, the regional type site. Our analysis indicates that people used Poverty Point Objects and imported lithics at Jaketown by 4525–4100 cal BP—earlier than elsewhere in the region. By 3450–3350 cal BP, people intensively occupied Jaketown, harvesting a consistent suite of wild plants. Between 3445 and 3270 cal BP, prior to the apex of earthwork construction at Poverty Point, the community at Jaketown built at least two earthworks and multiple post structures before catastrophic flooding sometime after 3300 cal BP buried the Late Archaic landscape under alluvium. These new data lead us to conclude that the archaeological record of the Late Archaic Lower Mississippi Valley does not reflect a uniform regional culture. Rather, relationships between Jaketown and Poverty Point indicate a multipolar history in which communities selectively participated in larger social phenomena—such as exchange networks and architectural traditions—while maintaining diverse, localized practices.

The aim of this paper is to bring attention to weed ecology research that is taking place in an unexpected discipline: archaeology. While archaeobotanists (archaeologists or botanists who specialize in archaeological plant remains) have been accessing literature in weed ecology for decades and applying the findings to their own studies, their results are almost exclusively published in archaeological journals such as the Journal of Archaeological Science or Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. For this reason, their work is underutilized by weed ecologists, especially those who have an interest in historical weed ecology. Archaeobotanical research could help weed scientists understand the long-term effects of agricultural practices on weed communities and predict the potential impacts of climate change. This paper begins with a brief review of the history of archaeobotany as a discipline, then describes ways in which weed ecology is applied in archaeobotany, including Functional Interpretation of Botanical Surveys (FIBS). Finally, we present opportunities for future collaboration between archaeobotanists and weed scientists.

Paleoethnobotanical perspectives are essential for understanding past lifeways yet continue to be underrepresented in Paleoindian research. We present new archaeobotanical and radiocarbon data from combustion features within stratified cultural components at Connley Caves, Oregon, that reaffirm the inclusion of plants in the diet of Paleoindian groups. Botanical remains from three features in Connley Cave 5 show that people foraged for diverse dryland taxa and a narrow range of wetland plants during the summer and fall months. These data add new taxa to the known Pleistocene food economy and support the idea that groups equipped with Western Stemmed Tradition toolkits had broad, flexible diets. When viewed continentally, this work contributes to a growing body of research indicating that regionally adapted subsistence strategies were in place by at least the Younger Dryas and that some foragers in the Far West may have incorporated a wider range of plants including small seeds, leafy greens, fruits, cacti, and geophytes into their diet earlier than did Paleoindian groups elsewhere in North America. The increasing appearance of diverse and seemingly low-ranked resources in the emerging Paleoindian plant-food economy suggests the need to explore a variety of nutritional variables to explain certain aspects of early foraging behavior.

Investigations at sites across northwestern Honduras—inside and outside the Maya area—have revealed diverse food activities and ingredients. Paralleling the evidence from durable artifact assemblages, we see transformation over time in materials and practices, as well as the movement of elements across the landscape. Botanical evidence points toward a dynamic overlap between northern and southern societies, with northwestern Honduras serving as a sort of regional crossroads. In this article, we compare cuisines from several ancient communities in northwestern Honduras, using microbotanical and macrobotanical residues. We briefly address the political and historic context of the region and provide abridged biographies of several culinary taxa. Of particular interest are milpa annual crops such as maize and squash, managed and cultivated palm species, wild and managed herbaceous species, edible fruit species, and root and tuberous crops such as lerén, sweet potato, and manioc.

In the Lake Titicaca Basin during the Late Intermediate period (LIP; AD 1100–1450), people's lives were overwhelmingly structured by warfare. Previous research in the region has shed light on how martial conflict between and possibly among competing ethnic groups motivated people to live in fortified villages on defensive hilltops. At the same time, there was a centuries-long drought that threatened agricultural production. Little is known about the plant use of people living in hillforts during this arduous time. Drawing on macrobotanical information collected from Ayawiri, one of the largest hillforts in the northern Titicaca Basin, I argue that the food stuffs and plants used were locally grown. Additionally, these findings indicate a possible departure from earlier symbolically charged and ritually important plant consumption practices based on the lack of imported maize. This research sheds light on how people adapted their domestic and agricultural strategies to warfare and climate change during the LIP.

El estudio del registro arqueobotánico asociado a un individuo femenino del sitio de Quilicura 1 permitió acercarnos a entender cómo los contextos funerarios del periodo Tardío (1400-1536 dC) contribuyen a la comprensión de los procesos sociopolíticos asociados a la presencia inka en la zona central de Chile. A través de los carporrestos y microrrestos de los residuos de uso de piezas cerámicas ofrendadas, se logró determinar el uso de plantas silvestres y domesticadas en la preparación de alimentos para los difuntos. Estas comidas y preparaciones tipo chicha, además de la presencia de un conjunto de artefactos vinculados a su preparación y consumo, habrían sido la esencia de la hospitalidad, una actividad fundamental en la integración eficiente de las poblaciones locales y, por ende, del funcionamiento del Tawantinsuyu.

Comparing the source of a commodity with the social levels of the people amongst whom it is found can reveal important aspects of social structure. This case study of a Maya community, using archaeological and ethnographic data, shows that pine and pine charcoal was procured at a distance and distributed unevenly in settlements. The researchers deduce that this commodity was not freely available in the market place, but was subject to political control.