Flower Power: Discussing Ethnobotany

Anthropology is the study of people (their presents, their pasts, their languages, and their biology).  Given the breadth of the discipline I, the author, often find myself locating anthropology in various other fields of study, even if the individuals working in those disciplines do not see it themselves.  This is because where there are people there is at least a touch of anthropology.  Today’s blog post is dedicated to supporting this point by examining the connections between the study of plants (e.g., agriculture, plant sciences, botany, etc.) and anthropology, which is more formally known as ethnobotany.

 

The term ethnobotany was coined by American scholar John William Harshberger in 1895.  At that time it had a very narrow focus that was simply the study of how native cultural groups used and interacted with plants and the physical environment.  Many early ethnobotanists typically recorded what plants were being used by indigenous groups and the purpose of those uses. 

 

Today, however, the definition of ethnobotany has expanded.  Presently ethnobotany is understood to be an interdisciplinary field that draws upon anthropology (specifically cultural anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology), biology (including but not limited to botany), agriculture, chemistry, ecology, history, and economics.  There remain some disagreements concerning the specific definition, but generally it is understood to be the study of the intersections between cultural groups and plants, allowing for a greater understanding of human relationships with nature and how those relationships have changed over time.  No longer are ethnobotanists exclusively focused on non-Western cultural groups but also people who identify as Western or urban-industrialists, the latter of which also includes the rural populations who live in such nations. 

 

There has also been an increase in the types of studies that fall within this newly defined idea of ethnobotany. Of course there remains the cataloguing of what plants are used and how by cultural groups (both in the past and present).  This is important to understanding how people value plants for specific uses (e.g., certain woods for construction of housing, utilitarian goods, or artworks; or certain plants for medicinal purposes).  There are new avenues of research, which include but are not limited to recognizing the role of humans in the development and diversification of plants (e.g., the development of marijuana or the various species of corn); the role people play in the management, proliferation, or loss of wild plants through unintentional or intentional practices (e.g., the extinction of a plant associated with contraception); as well as the use of plants in medicine, magic, ritual, personal use (e.g., clothing or housing), nutrition, and identity, although this last one is largely a focus among anthropologists (e.g., among the ancient Maya or African Americans).  There are even forays into studying how people hunting seed dispersing animals (e.g., primates) affects the plant ecology of the area.

 

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of ethnobotany a variety of methods are used to conduct these studies.  These include those that are specific to the scientific disciplines employed (e.g., isotopic studies), but specific anthropological methods used are largely found within cultural anthropological methods.  These include participant observation, interviews, and making use of cultural informants.  There are not many individuals who are trained specifically in ethnobotany, so many ethnobotanical studies are beingconducted by interdisciplinary teams that include anthropologists.  There are, of course, anthropologists and scientists who strike out on their own, drawing upon the methods and techniques of other fields to complete their research.

 

Ultimately, ethnobotany is one area of study that demonstrates the utility of anthropology in furthering our knowledge.  Ethnobotany allows one to better understand the human connections to plants and how that has and continues to affect the natural environments we exist in.  Preservation of human societies and natural environments will require the appropriate use of ethnobotanical research, including the use of the anthropological skills that are instrumental to this discipline.

 

Works Cited

Albuquerque, U. P., Ramos, M. A., Ferreira Júnior, W. S., & Muniz de Medeiros, P. (2017). Ethnobotany for Beginners. London: Springer International Publishing.

Heinrich, M. (2000). Ethnobotany and Its Role in Drug Development. Phytotherapy Research, 479-488.

Prance, G. T. (1991). What is Ethnobotany Today? Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 209-216.

Welsch, R. L., & Vivanco, L. A. (2020). Anthropology: Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Applied Anthropologist Profile: Margaret Hangan, Heritage Program Manager for the U.S. Forest Service

Margaret Hangan, Heritage Program Manager for the Kaibab National Forest

 

There is an old saying that goes: “Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  There are variations on this saying, but ultimately, the message is clear: if you love what you do it will never feel like work.  It will be your passion project.  This very much embodies the career of Margaret Hangan, who has made a career out of her passion for history and archaeology.  She is currently employed as a Heritage Program Manager for the Kaibab National Forest, but she has worked for several decades in archaeology in various private and federal sector positions, all of which will be covered in this post.

 

Margaret Hangan’s interest in archaeology started in a very common (for many archaeologists) place: it started with dinosaurs.  She was interested in digging them up, but she did not initially start her adult working life in that or anything related to it.  She actually started out as a waitress while she attended community college.  She had no set path when she started her coursework at the community college.  She simply took classes that sounded interesting and given her interests in dinosaurs she opted to take an archaeology course.  This is where she got hooked into the field.  She ultimately pursued and in 1989 completed her Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Pitzer College.

 

For about a decade after that she worked in the private sector as an archaeologist.  The work was steady but inconsistent, leading her to pursue her Master’s of Arts degree in anthropology.  She enrolled in the program offered through the University of California-Bakersfield, and someone recommended she apply for the Student Career Experience Program (renamed to the Indefinite Intern program).  In an interview she admitted that she really needed the money, which is why she ultimately applied to the program, and it worked out because she was placed with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).  The internship provided her money and flexibility to complete her Master’s degree, which was done in 2003, and it launched her career in the federal sector as she moved directly into a full time position with the BLM.  She transitioned in short order to the U.S. Forest Service, working for the Cleveland National Forest as a Heritage and Tribal Relations Program Manager.  She stayed in that position for three years before moving on to her current position as the Heritage Program Manager with the Kaibab National Forest.  In this position she is responsible for meeting compliance standards with the Historic Preservation Act, and she pursues various prehistoric and historic archaeology projects throughout the area, many of which focus on Black history.

 

In addition she has served as a co-chair of the Arizona Historic Archaeology Advisory Committee and a member of the Arizona Governor’s Archaeological Advisory Council.  She was also the President of the Southwestern Region’s Regional Civil Rights Committee, wherein she completed work focusing on diversity inclusion, LGBTQ recognition and other relevant issues.  This work has more recently gotten her involved in the U.S. Forest Service’s Culture Heritage in the Forest (CHIF) program.  It is a program that was recently developed for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities to learn and gain exposure to the heritage programs with the U.S. Forest Service.  The goal of this program is to expand the number of minority candidates who work for agency, and as Hangan is one of five Black archaeologists working for the U.S. Forest Service she is dedicated to increasing the number greatly.  During an interview she noted that when there are not People of Color or other minorities in these positions that certain stories do not get told, and it is important to her and the people she serves to have all these stories shared.  I suspect that Hangan’s efforts, with the support of the U.S. Forest Service, will encourage a greater diversified workforce and enable those stories to be told.

 

References

Baca, B. (2021, February 26). HerStory: Meet Margaret Hangan. Retrieved from U.S. Forest Service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/inside-fs/delivering-mission/excel/herstory-meet-margaret-hangan

Hangan, M. (2020, September 24). Interview: Margaret Hangan. (R. Kline, Interviewer)

Hangan, M. (2024, May 2). SBA Spotlight: Margaret Hangan. (S. f. Archaeologists, Interviewer)

Museum of Northern Arizona. (2024, March 9). African Americans and the Arizona Lumber Industry. Retrieved from Museum of Northern Arizona: https://musnaz.org/event/african-americans-and-the-arizona-lumber-industry/

Natural Inquirer. (2024, February). Margaret Hangan, Archeologist. Retrieved from Natural Inquirer, U.S. Forest Service: https://cdn.naturalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/HANGAN_PSTR.pdf

 

 

Seeing the World in Technicolor: Color Lexicon and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

As previously discussed on this blog there is a concept, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, that promotes the idea that language effects and thereby limits our perception of the world.  This idea was conceived by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf in 1929, although it did not become popular in either anthropology or linguistics until the 1950s.  This overlapped with dominant scholarly values within anthropology wherein scholars sought to understand how different people classified the world around them. 

 

From this came two important studies concerning color lexicons (vocabulary) and perception.  The first was a study completed in the 1950s by Lenneberg and Roberts.  In their study they took over 300 Munsell color swatches, which are considered the standard for color labeling within science, engineering, art among Western cultural groups, and put them on a larger board.  Lenneberg and Roberts then covered the swatches with plastic and asked participants who spoke either Zuni or English to identify all the colors of one specific color category (e.g., all green, all blue, all red, etc.).  Lenneberg and Roberts found variation in some of the color identifications among English speakers, and they found consistency among color identifications among the Zuni speakers.  Their results were used to support the notion of linguistic relativity, which claims that languages affect and in essence limit how one perceives the world around them.  Ultimately, it could be concluded that the Zuni speakers could not perceive of the color differences as finely as the English speakers.

 

This study was, however, replicated and expanded upon by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay over a decade later.  In their study they incorporated a larger pool of participants, drawing from over 100 different language speakers.  They achieved similar results as Lenneberg and Roberts but came to completely different conclusions.  It was not that people could not conceive or perceive differences in color.  They just had different ways of describing colors based on the limits of their vocabulary.  This did not make any group inferior or superior to another.  It just meant that there were differences in describing the colors. 

 

More recently a study conducted among the Tsimane’ people of the lowlands of Bolivia supported these conclusions.  The researchers found that those who were bilingual (who spoke their native language and Bolivian Spanish) were able to use their native language to positively identify differences in colors.  Their native language does have two terms that are typically used interchangeably to describe green and blue, but among the bilingual Tsimane’ speakers they effectively differentiated between green and blue as Bolivian Spanish speakers did.  Ultimately, they learned what the Bolivian Spanish speakers believed about colors and incorporated it into their descriptions of the colors to meet those other speaker’s needs.  Ultimately, it was not that the Tsimane’ could not perceive color differences.  They did not see a need to do so, whereas when that need came up as a result of interactions with a culturally different group they used their language to meet those speakers’ needs.

 

Berlin and Kay ultimately reached various other conclusions.  They discovered that there are only ten to 12 basic color terms across all languages, although those terms may and often do vary.  Groups that are more isolated from others tend to have fewer color terms, but there are often ways of differentiating among variations of colors.  Berlin and Kay also realized that color lexicon is dependent on cultural experience (e.g., forest green is an acceptable way of describing green if cultural groups know what a forest is versus denim blue, which may not translate well for group who do not know what denim is).  This led them to argue that the terms used for defining color needed to be generalized and recognizable across all cultural groups, removing compound color terms (e.g., blue-green).  Variations of color should also not be considered part of the basic color terms (e.g., light yellow or fire engine red).

 

Works Cited

Nield, David. "How a Remote Amazonian Culture Saw 'Blue' And 'Green' in a Whole New Light." Science Alert 12 November 2023. Electronic.

Stanlaw, James. "Colors and Culture: Language, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and the Americanist Tradition in Anthropology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Science." n.d. Illinois State University. Electronic. 14 May 2024.

Welsch, Robert L., Luis A. Vivanco and Agustin Fuentes. Anthropology: Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Print.