archeobotanie

Archeobotanie, often rendered as archaeobotany in English, is the study of plant remains from archaeological sites to understand past human-plant interactions and environments. The field analyzes how people collected, cultivated, consumed, stored, and used plants, as well as how vegetation has changed in response to human activity and climate. It covers material such as macro-remains (seeds, fruits, wood, charcoal) and micro-remains (pollen, phytoliths, starch grains), recovered from contexts like middens, hearths, and sediments.

Analytical methods include flotation and sieving to recover charred plant material, microscopy for identification, reference collections for taxonomy, and dating techniques to place finds in time. In addition to macrobotanical analysis, palynology (pollen analysis) and phytolith or starch grain analysis help reconstruct past environments and diets. In recent decades, molecular approaches such as ancient DNA and proteins have increasingly complemented traditional methods.

Archaeobotany informs questions about the origins and spread of agriculture, crop domestication, diet, storage, and plant-based technologies, as well as trade and exchange and responses to environmental change. Preservation biases, taphonomic processes, and regional variation mean results must be interpreted cautiously. The field intersects with paleoecology, zooarchaeology, and related disciplines, and is sometimes categorized under paleoethnobotany.