The Secwepemc (Shuswap) people of the Plateau of northwestern North America developed and practice(d) intricate relationships with plants that reflect the biodiversity of their environment and thousands of years of experience of living in Secwepemculecw, their homeland. This collection of essays derives from more than twenty years of collaborative research on ethnobotany and ethnoecology with Secwepemc plant specialists and elders. It begins with an in-depth introduction to botanical and indigenous perspectives on Secwepemc plants, environment and landscape, and then goes on to address such diverse topics as archaeobotany, plant resource management and stewardship, edible root vegetables and edible lichen harvesting and processing, the role of cultural knowledge in understanding Secwepemc medicines, and the nutritional qualities of edible plants. Additional chapters in this volume speak to the fascinating ways in which plant and environmental knowledge is articulated in oral narratives, and how Secwepemc Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom is constituted. In light of the escalating nature of environmental degradation in Secwepemculecw, the volume addresses the crucial relevance, now and in the future, of Secwepemc TEKW and environmental stewardship.

Secwepemc People and Plants: Research Papers in Shuswap Ethnobotany (Contributions in Ethnobiology)

Politics & Social Sciences

Ignace, Marianne B.

Social Sciences

Society of Ethnobiology, The

This book examines the ethnobotany and ethnozoology of pre-20th Century Ainu, the indigenous people of the North Pacific islands of Hokkaido (Japan) and Sakhalin, and the Kurils (Russia). Ainu of this time were fishing hunter-gatherers. When colonized by Japan and Russia at the turn of the 20th Century, Ainu had no written language, but strong oral traditions, which Japanese, Russian and western ethnographers recorded. Ainu Ethnobiology is a linguistic work as well as an ecological one. Williams analyses over 100 old texts, mostly translating from Japanese, with other original sources in Russian, French, German and English, thereby amassing a work with perhaps the most comprehensive bibliography of primary sources on the Ainu. Williams also spent many months in the field building a working knowledge of the environment in which the Ainu lived and worked. He presents the native flora and fauna of Ainu daily life, and explains their use in terms of activities, rituals, and material culture.

Ainu Ethnobiology (Contributions in Ethnobiology)

Williams, Dai

Anthropology

Small pieces of notched pottery at lowland Maya archaeological sites served as sinkers or weights (pesas) for fishing nets and lines. More than 1400 of these artifacts recovered from six sites in the central Petén lakes region dated to the Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic/Contact periods. Thirteen variables of the sinkers were analyzed, including provenience, dimensions, pottery type, and shape, with comparisons among sites and individual structures within sites—including locations of probable decomposed fishing nets. The weights of these artifacts declined dramatically between Preclassic and Classic times, and then less abruptly in the Postclassic, when they began to exhibit signs of standardization: a smaller range of dimensions and use of specially formed pellets. The decline in weight suggests capture of smaller fish, and may reveal changes in water quality, fishing strategies, or “fishing down the food web.” 1. Introduction to Lowland Maya Fish and Fishing The Lowland Setting Ancient Mesoamerican Art and Ritual Colonial History and Ethnography 2. The Petén Lakes: Environment, Archaeology, and Fishes The Central Petén Lakes’ Environment Archaeology and Occupational History of the Lake Basins Freshwater Fishes of Central Petén Fishing Today 3. Fishing Nets and Sinkers Nets Sinkers (Pesas) Characterizing Petén Sinkers: Methods 4. Petén Lakes’ Preclassic and Classic Sinkers Preclassic-Period Sinkers Classic-Period Sinkers 5. Postclassic Contexts and Sinkers Postclassic and Later Sinkers Macanché Island Zacpetén Ixlú Lakes Quexil and Petenxil Tayasal Nixtun-Ch'ich' 6. Fiber-Working and Net-Making 7. Petén Pesas in Broader Context Comparisons of Weight Color Dimensions Classic and Postclassic Comparisons Chronological and Geographical Variations Technology and Economy Why Declining Weights? Archaeological Data on Fish Consumption 8. Discussion and Conclusions

Small Things Forgotten: Artifacts of Fishing in the Peten Lakes Region, Guatemala (Contributions in Ethnobiology)

Rice, Don S.

Rice, Prudence M.

Pugh, Timothy W.

Archaeology

Entering a graduate program in the sciences or social sciences requires a transition from structured undergraduate learning using prompts for reading, writing, and exam-taking to an unstructured environment of knowing a field of study, identifying research problems, and answering questions to fill a gap in knowledge that is reported in a thesis or dissertation. Faculty members and students often assume that gifted undergraduates will “figure it out when they enter graduate school,” but students do not have independent research skills at the beginning of graduate programs. Becoming a Researcher in focuses on the transition from structured learning to independent research with exercises on routine setting, time management, peer review, and essay writing to focus on research topics. Exercises concern adopting new habits and mindsets that are essential for success in graduate school. Lessons from the exercises help students design a research proposal. At the end of the first year of graduate school, students should be well on their way to becoming a researcher.

Becoming a Researcher: Making the Transition to Graduate School

Wolverton, Steve

This book describes the traditional use of wild plants among the Arikara (Sahnish) for food, medicine, craft, and other uses. The Arikara grew corn, hunted and foraged, and traded with other tribes in the northern Great Plains. Their villages were located along the Missouri River in northern South Dakota and North Dakota. Today, many of them live at Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota, as part of the MHA (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) Nation. We document the use of 106 species from 31 plant families, based primarily on the work of Melvin Gilmore, who recorded Arikara ethnobotany from 1916 to 1935. Gilmore interviewed elders for their stories and accounts of traditional plant use, collected material goods, and wrote a draft manuscript, but was not able to complete it due to debilitating illness. Fortunately, his field notes, manuscripts, and papers were archived and form the core of the present volume. Gilmore's detailed description is augmented here with historical accounts of the Arikara gleaned from the journals of Great Plains explorers-Lewis and Clark, John Bradbury, Pierre Tabeau, and others. Additional plant uses and nomenclature is based on the field notes of linguist Douglas R. Parks, who carried out detailed documentation of the tribe's language from 1970-2001. Although based on these historical sources, the present volume features updated modern botanical nomenclature, contemporary spelling and interpretation of Arikara plant names, and color photographs and range maps of each species. Kelly Kindscher collected and assembled the historical Gilmore materials; Logan Sutton contributed the Arikara spellings and linguistic analyses; and, Michael and Loren Yellow Bird-Arikara themselves-provided the cultural context. The work serves as an important regional ethnobotany of the Arikara Tribe, one of the most influential on the Northern Plains, and should be of great interest to ethnobotanists, ethnomedical practitioners, historians, and other Indigenous Peoples. More importantly, this book is for the Arikara people of all ages as documentation of, and reconnection to, their cultural heritage.

Sahnish (Arikara) Ethnobotany (Contributions in Ethnobiology)

Kindscher, Kelly

Yellow Bird, Michael

Yellow Bird, Loren

Sutton, Logan

The sighting by the well-known missionaries and natural historians, Poul and Hans Egede, of an unrecognized marine animal off the coast of Greenland in 1734, which in their writings would be variably referred to as a “terribly big” or “very horrible” sea creature, or translated as a “most dreadful monster,” is generally regarded as initiating the modern cultural phenomenon of sea serpents. The present ethnozoology study undertakes a detailed examination of this sighting which has become one of the most famous and influential encounters with an unidentified marine object (UMO) construed as being a sea monster. The approach taken is multidisciplinary, involving aspects of environmental history and historical ecology, contemporary zoology and conservation biology, as well as folklore and cultural history. Following an introduction to the early modern belief in Nordic sea monsters, a diachronic review is presented of 36 interpretations that have been advanced over three centuries by natural historians, natural scientists, cryptozoologists, biologists, and popular writers to explain the Egede UMO. Secondly, a new and careful parsing of the words and examination of the illustration of the encounter recorded by the eyewitnesses suggests two novel interpretations. In common with recent reevaluations of other sea serpent sightings, a case is made that the Egede UMO provides further evidence for the non-lethal entanglement of marine animals in pre-plastic fishing gear or hunting equipment. Furthermore, a new candidate for the animal behind the Egede UMO is suggested to be the basking shark. This is a species with a long history of being misconstrued as a sea monster, as reflected by its scientific name Cetorhinnus maximus, or “pointy-nosed monster of giant size.” Thirdly, the pervasive cultural influence of the Egede encounter through time is reviewed, including two famous paleontological gaffes, later sea monster sightings, modern cryptozoology beliefs, and further examples of UMO’s “afterlife” in contemporary imagination. The Afterword considers the possibility of precedents for the Egede UMO, as well as conjectures as to the fate of the entangled animal, before commenting on enduring mysteries of the sea. Finally, an appendix identifies locations where the further ethnozoological exploration of sea monsters can be undertaken.

Ethnozoology of Egede's "Most Dreadful Monster," the Foundational Sea Serpent (Contributions in Ethnobiology)

France, Robert L.

Effective Approaches to Human Ecology Education

Shebitz, Daniela J.

The Aztec empire was established in the Valley of Mexico in the 14th century, eventually dominating a vast region from a base on their island capital city, Tenochtitlán. Hernán Cortés sacked Tenochtitlán for Spain in 1521. Missionary friars arrived soon after to begin the Christianization of the Mesoamerican population. To facilitate their conversion, Franciscan scholars trained the descendants of the Aztec nobility in alphabetic writing. Indigenous students/colleagues soon mastered written Latin and learned to write their native Náhuatl. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún organized a complex ethnographic enterprise employing Indigenous colleagues to compile an encyclopedia of Indigenous Aztec knowledge. This work survived in Spanish translation as the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España and was subsequently published with parallel Náhuatl and English texts as the Florentine Codex. Book 11 of the Codex is devoted to “Earthly Things” of which the “Second Chapter,…telleth of all the different kinds of birds.” Over 130 are named and described and illustrated in varying detail. However, establishing the correspondence of these birds with our contemporary ornithological inventory of Mexican birds has been a challenge. The Mexican biologist Martín del Campo published an analysis based on the Spanish version in 1940, and his suggested identifications have been treated as definitive. I have reviewed the evidence in light of contemporary knowledge and offer here a refined analysis of the probable identities of the birds named in the Codex with a detailed rationale. This material offers rich insights into a Mesoamerican traditional natural history.

The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering 16th-Century Sources in Náhuatl (Contributions in Ethnobiology)

Hunn, Eugene S.

Dombrosky, Jonathan

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