New Lives for Ancient and Extinct Crops (Paperback)

Paul E. Minnis

ISBN 10: 0816534225 / ISBN 13: 9780816534227

Published by University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2016

About this Item

Paperback. New Lives for Ancient and Extinct Crops profiles nine plant species that were important contributors to human diets and medicinal uses in antiquity: maygrass, chenopod, marsh elder, agave, little barley, chia, arrowroot, little millet, and bitter vetch. Each chapter is written by a well-known scholar, who illustrates the value of the ancient crop record to inform the present. This volume represents an exciting new vista for archaeobotanists, including an implied challenge to other specialists to think about the modern applications of their scholarship.American Antiquity Profiles nine plant species that were important contributors to human diets and medicinal uses in antiquity: maygrass, chenopod, marsh elder, agave, little barley, chia, arrowroot, little millet, and bitter vetch. Each chapter is written by a well-known scholar, who illustrates the value of the ancient crop record to inform the present. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780816534227

Bibliographic Details

• Title: New Lives for Ancient and Extinct Crops (Paperback)
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press, Tucson
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816534225
• ISBN 13: 9780816534227
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Over many millennia, farmers across the world have domesticated literally thousands of species and developed tens of thousands of varieties of these plants. Despite the astonishing agricultural diversity that existed long ago, the world’s current food base has narrowed to a dangerous level. By studying the long and dynamic history of farming in the ancient past, archaeology can play a part in helping ensure the stability of the human food supply by identifying once-important crops and showing where and how such crops were grown in the past. Thanks to this work, extinct crops might even be redomesticated from their wild progenitors.

New Lives for Ancient and Extinct Crops profiles nine plant species that were important contributors to human diets and had medicinal uses in antiquity: maygrass, chenopod, marshelder, agave, little barley, chia, arrowroot, little millet, and bitter vetch. Each chapter is written by a well-known scholar, who illustrates the global value of the ancient crop record to inform the present. From eastern and western North America, Mesoamerica, South America, western Asia, and south-central Asia, the contributors provide examples of the unexpected wealth of information available in the archaeological record about ancient and extinct crops.

About the Author

Paul E. Minnis is a professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. Minnis’s books include Biodiversity and Native America, Social Adaption to Food Stress, Ethnobotany: A Reader, The Neighbors of Casas Grandes: Excavating Medio Period Communities of Northwestern Chihuahua, Casas Grandes and Its Hinterland: Prehistoric Regional Organization in Northwest Mexico, People and Plants in Ancient Western North America, and People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America, among others.