Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1. Setting the scene
1. Food carbohydrates from plants, by Les Copeland
2. Why protein is not enough: the role of plants and plant processing in meeting human needs for dietary diversity, by Peter J. Butterworth, Peter R. Ellis and Michele Wollstonecroft
3. An ape’s perspective on the origin of medicinal plant use in humans, by Michael Huffman
4. Plants as raw materials, by Karen Hardy
5. Hunter-gatherer plant use in south west Asia: the path to agriculture. Amaia Arranz Juan Jose Ibanez and Lydia Zapata

Part 2. Plant foods, tools and people.
6. Scanning Electron Microscopy and starchy food in Mesolithic Europe: the importance of roots and tubers in Mesolithic diet, by Lucy Kubiak-Martens
7. Tools, use wear and experimentation: extracting plants from stone and bone, by Annelou van Gijn and Aimée Little
8. Buccal dental microwear as an indicator of diet in modern and ancient human populations, by Laura Mónica Martínez, Ferran Estebaranz and Alejandro Pérez-Pérez
9. What early human populations ate. The use of phytoliths for identifying plant remains in the archaeological record at Olduvai, by Rosa Maria Albert and Irene Esteban
10. Phytolith evidence of the use of plants as food by Late Natufians at Raqefet Cav, by Robert C Power, Arlene M Rosen and Dani Nadel
11. Evidence of plant foods obtained from the dental calculus of individuals from a Brazilian shell mound, by Célia Helena C. Boyadjian; Sabine Eggers and Rita Scheel-Ybert
12. Stable isotopes and mass spectrometry, by Karen Hardy and Stephen Buckley

Part 3. Providing a context: Ethnography, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology
13. Prehistoric fish traps and fishing structures from Zamostje 2, Russian European Plain: Archaeological and ethnographic contexts, by Ignacio Clemente Conte, Vladimir M. Lozovski, Ermengol Gassiot Ballbè, Andrey N. Mazurkevich and Olga V. Lozovskaya
14. Plants and archaeology in Australia, by Sally Brockwell, Janelle Stevenson and Annie Clarke
15. Plentiful scarcity: plant use among Fuegian hunter-gatherers, by Marian Berihuete Azorin, Raquel Piqué Huerta and Maria-Estela Mansur
16. Ethnobotany in evolutionary perspective: wild plants in diet composition and daily use among Hadza hunter-gatherers, by Alyssa N. Crittenden
17. Wild edible plant use among the people of Tomboronkoto, Kédougou region, Senegal, by Mathieu Guèye and Papa Ibra Samb
 
The development of Neolithic house societies in Orkney: Investigations in the Bay of Firth, Mainland, Orkney (1994–2014), edited by Colin Richards and Richard Jones

About the Author

Karen Hardy is an archaeologist and works for ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Training) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her principal research interests lie in pioneer populations, human adaptations, pre-agrarian diet and plant-based technology.

Reviews

I heartily recommend this publication to anybody interested in plants, their use in past and present non-agrarian societies, and he methodologies required to study them.
*European Journal of Archaeology*

This unique collection is valuable for paleoanthropologists and their graduate students seeking new perspectives on paleo-ecology and the evolution of hominin diet. It clearly summarizes the current Bstate of the profession. As a text, the price is reasonable and worth the investment.
*Economic Botany*

This book is a noteworthy attempt to bring archaeobotany into the archaeological discourse and is useful for the student, the non-specialised archaeologist and the general reader.
*Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society*