ETHNOBOTANY AND PALEOETHNOBOTANY IN THE ANDES OF SOUTH AMERICA: RECONSTRUCTING THE HISTORY OF BIOCULTURAL SPACES AND SPECIES FROM LOCAL TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE

LEMA VERÓNICA; POCHETTINO, MARIA LELIA; CAPPARELLI AYLEN; LAMBARÉ, A.; LOPEZ, ML,; PETRUCCI NATALIA; PEREZ M L

Bumthang

Congreso; 14 Congress of Ethnobiology; 2014

Ugyen Wanchuck Institute

This presentation aims to bring a synthesis of the advances made by our research team in understanding the generation of biocultural spaces and species, as well as food, in the Andes of South America, from ethnobotanical and paleoethnobotanical approaches. Fieldwork with local aboriginal and peasant communities has been carried out mainly in the Northwest area of Argentina, but also in Southwest Bolivia (Fig. 1) Ethnobotanical studies had two main objectives: on the one hand, to realize a comprehensive study of pre-harvest plant management practices and, in the other, to understand post-harvest trajectories of plants in order to make food. These studies were related to native and introduced species and also to wild, weedy, cultivated and domesticated plant communities. Plant processing was understood in the frame of post harvest systems, including the recording of plant by-products and wastes. All this background was applied to the interpretation of archaeobotanical remains recovered in archaeological sites of the area in order to track the history of techniques and practices: their presence, transformation and complementation with other activities through time.