Techniques for Integrating Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Datasets: Examples from Pre-Hispanic Northwestern Honduras

ABSTRACT

What are useful quantitative approaches in situations with highly variable data quantities, contexts, and sampling strategies? How can paleoethnobotanical findings be interpreted without over-representing data or selling results short? Described here are several major issues and potential solutions. The four sites of the study are located northwestern Honduras, a region with fairly hostile environments for paleoethnobotanical preservation. For this reason, several types of botanical residues are combined to provide a more holistic picture of past ethnobotanical practices. In some cases, these data prove to be complementary, while in others, they are corroborative. This article includes tactics for integrating multiple sample protocols, multiple and overlapping diagnostic elements, multiple and overlapping clade categories, multiple and overlapping samples in a single locus, multiple and overlapping formation processes, and multiple and overlapping cultural practices. In each section, the issue, sampling strategies, quantitative approaches, and a few results are described.

KEYWORDS:

• data integration
• quantification
• phytoliths
• starch grains
• macroremains

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the project directors at the four sites of my study: Rosemary Joyce, Julia Hendon, Jeanne Lopiparo, and John Henderson. I would also like to thank the very many seasonal staff, volunteers, and students at each of these projects, some of whom I never had the opportunity to meet in person. I give special thanks to Rachel Cane for initial mentorship and the opportunity to work with results from her analysis. My thanks as well for the extraordinarily helpful comments from Christine Hastorf and three anonymous reviewers. Funding for some of this research was provided by the Stahl Fund of the Archaeological Research Facility, a Research Assistantship in the Humanities, and a Research Enabling Grant of the Committee on Research of the Academic Senate of the University of California, Berkeley.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributor

Shanti Morell-Hart (Ph.D. 2011, University of California, Berkeley) is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University and Director of the McMaster Paleoethnobotanical Research Facility (MPERF). Her research interests include ethnoecology, gastronomic heritage, and foodways in Mesoamerica.

ORCID

Shanti Morell-Hart http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1866-8714