Archeological methods enable scientists to explore historical artifacts accurately in their quest of studying and effort to recreate the past especially the cultures that existed before civilizations. They first gather data from the areas of interest through methods such as excavation before embarking on analysis. Radiocarbon dating and potassium-argon dating are one of the key techniques that archaeologists use to analyze data. This paper looks into the links that scientists have established between archaeology, normally considered a natural science, and botany, one of the modern scientific approaches to study of plants, and how they have used various methods to establish botanical changes in a given archaeological site over time.
The article “Botany meets Archaeology: people and plants in the past,” give a detailed explanation of the types of palaeobotanical remains that scientists can recover together with the analytical methods that they use. It also stresses on the importance of iconographic and textual evidences through outlining the key areas of research on ancient plants. The areas include palaeconomy, poisons, medicines, perfumes, and dyes among others. According to the article, archaeology concerns itself with more than just studying of tombs, temples and palaces (Jo 2013). Over the recent years, archaeology has taken a different perspective from being a natural science to a field that has attracted the attention of other scientists such as botanists, zoologists and geologists. The article also reveals how archaeologists have in the past few realized the importance of collecting ancient plant remains to advance analytical techniques to aid their researches. This has given birth to palaeobotanists and artchaeobotanists.
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The article also describes the techniques that archaeologists are using to recover the historical botanical materials and also explains what have not been able to recover. It has also discovered the core areas that of research those floral remains have made it possible to study. The main areas of interest are the ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and their classical ages of civilizations. However, palaebotanical remnants and cultural practices that are found in those areas are distributed throughout the globe. The article explains the three steps of analyzing botanical remains namely, recovery of the materials, identifying them and finally interpreting them. The rates of recovering archaeobotanical evidence materials depends on the strategies that scientists use in the excavation process and prevailing environmental conditions within the area of excavation. The article also puts emphasis on the necessity of devising a sampling strategy prior to the process of excavation and also the need to consult with the concerned archaeobotanist although there is room for modification in the process of the research. The role of putting strategies in place is to ensure that scientist collect enough samples to boost the accuracy of the statistical results and application of relevant analytical techniques to meet the objectives of the research. The article also explains the role of taphonomic activities responsible for the introduction of botanical materials into any archaeological site. The study discusses the environmental conditions that have effects on the preservations as well as recovery of botanical remnants. Through archaeological surveys and excavation, archaeologists are able to give information about a region instead of concentrating in one site. Archaeologists use the aid of Geographical Information Systems to analyze the vegetation of a place and establish which features have changed over time.
Archaeobotanists in their studies have grouped palaeobotnical materials into macrofossils that can be seen through the naked eye and microfossils that require the aid of magnification in order to examine them. In order to identify botanical remnants, archaeologists depend on the analogies that exhibit modernized flora. Flowers require special environmental conditions of preservation thus it is quite difficult to preserve them in any archaeological records. Scientists use bio-molecular analysis to study microfossils such as phytoliths. Archaeologists use silica skeletons of plants that died many years ago to come up with valuable data that enables them to utilize archaeological sites. They use laser scanners to establish ground dispersal of an archaeological surface of a given area of geophysical survey. They use a combination of radar reflections to define the formed layers of lithic deposits (Landry et al 2018). According to the article, scientists also use residue analysis to separate biomarkers that make up plants. The study investigates and demonstrates the capacity of geographical methods in the investigation of distribution of vegetation and their change of botanical composition of a given area over time throughout history.
The article has exhaustively explained how archaeology is shifting from being natural science and incorporated other areas in the field of modern science. For archaeologists to recover palaebotanical remains in a given area, the use geographical methods to carry survey in the areas. They cannot come up with viable data without first studying the soil composition of the archaeological sites since most of the materials are embedded deep in the earth’s surface. The distribution of plants in different environments also uses geographical information. Other archaeological methods such use as radar reflections and laser scanners require modern scientific concepts that are different from archaeology that many regard as a natural science. The study of silica remains borrows concepts from biological sciences that seek to study the structural compositions of plants, botany. The study that the article describes thus reveals the relationship that exist between archaeology, botany and other sciences because of the research methods that archaeologists use to carry out the studies. Statistical analysis in archaeology also utilizes other scientific techniques.
References
Joy D, (13 May 2013). Botany Meets Archaeology: People and Plants in the Past, Journal of Experimental Botany, vol. 64, Issue 18, page 5805-5816, https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/ert068
Landry, D.B., Ferguson, I.J., Milne, B. et al (2018). Archaeological Method Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10816-018-9370-6
