archaeobotanists

Archaeobotanists are scientists who study plant remains recovered from archaeological sites to reconstruct past environments, economies, and human behavior. The field sits at the intersection of archaeology, botany, palynology, and ecology and seeks to understand how people acquired, cultivated, gathered, stored, and used plants, as well as how crops and landscapes changed through time. Research spans from hunter-gatherer groups to complex agricultural societies across regions and continents.

Researchers analyze both macroremains (seeds, fruits, wood, nutshells) and microremains (pollen, phytoliths, starch grains). Preservation conditions yield charred, waterlogged, or fossilized plant material, which influences recovery methods. Fieldwork often involves systematic sampling and flotation or sieving to recover botanical materials from soils. In the laboratory, archaeobotanists identify specimens against reference collections, measure morphological features, and apply microbotanical techniques such as pollen and phytolith analysis. Dating, radiocarbon methods, and stable isotope analysis help place plant remains in chronological context and reconstruct past environments.

The work aims to illuminate diet, subsistence strategies, and agricultural origins, as well as plant domestication, cultivation practices, trade, and environmental change. Findings contribute to broader questions about climate adaptation, landscape management, and cultural practices surrounding food and ritual. The discipline is collaborative, integrating methods from archaeology, botany, geology, and climate science, and it has a global reach with a long history of methodological development, including advances in flotation, reference collections, and comparative ethnobotany.