Looking for the past in the present : ethnoarchaeology of plant utilization in rural Bolivia

Abstract

Ethnoarchaeology is a still developing field of anthropology, where the methods of ethnography and archaeology are combined to interpret archaeological findings and generate and test hypotheses. Ethnobotany is the study of people and plants and their interactions. Through these two fields of study, I investigated the way contemporary people utilize plants in the rural Andean community of Huancarani, Cochabamba, Bolivia in the summer of 2008 to interpret and hypothesize about the floral remains of the archaeological site of Pirque Alto in Parotani, Cochabamba, Bolivia, which I excavated as part of my fieldschool in the summer of 2007.