Informants/ source peoples

Cultural data related to a useful plant is usually collected from one or more individuals, which we call 'informants'. Selecting the right informants is one of the most difficult tasks at the beginning of the fieldwork. If a good rapport is established with several members of the society/community, they might suggest some names to contact with. Gender relations are also important for selecting the informants, while in some societies women's talking with a male researcher is not considered proper, while if she is an elderly woman it may not create a big problem. So age, status, sex and political attitude of the informant have to be taken into account. However, while trying to choose the best informants, we should not forget that there is no single specialist in any area, and the information can be obtained from every single people, as one may knows more about the fodder plants, while a young children can take you to a rare catch of mushrooms. If we are trying to gather information on medicinal plants we need to get into contact with local healers, midwifes, shepherds, bone-settlers, herbalists, as well as medical doctors, practitioners of the area. If our aim is to gather information on edibles we may need to ask to women of various ages, and to children and men if they gather particular plants, e.g. mushrooms or root plants. Local office of agriculture, a restaurant nearby and particularly local markets may provide large amounts of data about edible plants and the local reciepts. Once the ironsmith of a village provide the best info about the digging tool of which people once used for digging up Crocus' bulbs. He told me that the boys were usually bribed him with the eggs they stolen from their own coop, in return to the iron tip he prepared for them.

The gender aspect in ethnobotany is very important, while women are usually the agents of transmitting the information and main caretakers of most plant-related information, vast majority of ethnobotanical studies until recently has been done by male researchers, and they have had quite indirect access to the women informants (Howard 2003; Price and Ogle 2008; Turner 2006). Women researchers not only brought a new understanding and appreciation of the gathering role of women and their role as farmers and in transmitting the knowledge, but also approach women informants more directly. Women farmers in many parts of the world collect while plants, some of them are weeds, fruits, seeds while they are also tending their garden, and this continuous collection is important from nutritional point of view as well as food security, and for extra cash (Ertug 2003; Etkin and Ross 1994; Kabeer 2003; Price and Ogle 2008). Usually the women create and maintain 'the taste' of the food and contribute to the health of the household through her gathering, shopping, trading, cooking and daily care.

Collaboration with local community can have positive affects on the transmission of the unrecorded heritage, particularly when the ethnobotanists contribute of creating a guide, a co-authored booklet, and/or a poster related to local plant use, including local names, images and landscape narratives. Presentations and collaborative studies in local schools also help to building up cultural valuation of local resources.

Vernacular/ Local names

Recording the vernacular name (indigenous/ local name) is one of the most important aspect of ethnobotanical study. Plant names contain a wealth of information on how a particular culture perceives and utilizes its plant resources and on how plants and their uses are diffused (Alexiades 1996:71). Although training in phoenetics might help to detect and transcribe the names, in most cases the ethnobotanist might not have such a training, or enough linguistic skills; but getting help from a linguist or carefully recording every name at least twice, and later confirm its written form with local people is strongly recommended. For example in Australia, about 200 languages has been recorded among aboriginal peoples, and some researchers assume that this large variation is not related with the isolation of various tribes, but is related with the jigsaw of microclimates within the ‘dry heart’ of Australia. Each tribe has their own names of the fauna and flora for their survival, that means they know them by heart, with all their properties, characteristics, and while they provide name to them that landscape provided survival. Thus knowing its name means more than a name, but knowing where, when, and how. An answer such as ‘no name’ may means: ‘the plant doesn’t grow in my country’ (Chatwin 1988:300). ‘A man raised in one part of the desert would know its flora and fauna backwards. He knew which plant attracted game. He knew his water. He knew where there were tubers underground. In other words by naming all the ‘things’ in his territory, he could always count on survival. But if you took him blindfold to another country, he might end up lost and starving’(Chatwin 1988:301). Recording vernacular/ local names with a taperecorder is also a necessity for further checks. In the study of medicinal plants and ethnoveterinary practices, the terminology of local diseases poses a challenge. The local term of a disease may or may not have a direct translation in Western medicine. When people explaining symptoms, causality and treatment, their terminology has to be carefully recorded. In this kind of study local practitioners, medical doctors who has been working in the area for long periods can be very useful informants. A list with local names, the description of each disease and its symptoms can be provided at the early stages of study by using free listing and interviews.

Availability of plants, resources

Useful plants are available in all kinds of climates and landscapes and people were capable of find/ discover useful plants whereever they live. From the Arctics to deserts, whereever people live they provide most of their needs from plants. Paul Nabhan, an Arab-American ethnobotanist points out that: 425 edible wild species found in the Sonoran Desert demonstrates how bountiful a desert can be. From the red-hot chiltepines of Mexico to the palms of Palm Springs, each plant exemplifies a symbolic or ecological relationship which people of this region have had with plants through history (Nabhan 1985). Some limitations imposed by the climate, soil and the altitude or landscape, other limitations are dependant on the culture, the technological abilities or know-how of the society. Religious restrictions and rules such as fasts or taboos and the beliefs also affects what and when some resources can be collected, harvested and eaten. While some plants and animals are considered edible by some societies, others are considered as a sin or as unacceptable, vulgar. Knowing one plants' usefulness, does not mean that it is considered useful in another area. Even if people knows its virtue, e.g. edibility, if they do not consider it as tasty or healthy, they do not gather it. On the other hand people consume quite toxic or unpalatable plants after long and tedious processes, why? The reasons are not always obvious and most of the time are not related with unavailability of other food resources, famine or any hardship. There are some common edibles, but no black-and-whites, and there is 'a sliding scale of edibility' (Mears and Hillman 2007: 32) among various cultures.

Limitations and Strengths

It is important to note that to create a complete ethnobotanical inventory of any traditional society is almost impossible, particularly when the destruction of tropical rainforests and other natural habitats where indigenous peoples live has reached an unprecedented rate (Prance 1991). Unless we spend years and years in the field, and be a part of the studied society we can not hope to have a full inventory, even then not only plants but some ways of processes and recepies have long been lost. Every time we found some informant who has lots of knowledge on plants, s/he complains that we should come 20 years earlier to meet his/her grandmother or grandfather. So we have to accept what we can gather, and we have to aware our weak points while trying to start data collection. Making a list of useful plants, including how they have used and for what is not enough, we also need to be careful about how people manage their resources. Many local people use their resources more friendly way than we can think of. It is crutial to learn ways of locals manage their resources for a more sustainable harvest and thus living.

Strengths of the ethnobotanical work from the archaeological point of view, lies in the universality of most common plants and the basic similarities of techniques of processes beyond borders and ages. When we record the traditional plant knowledge of one society, that knowledge is not limited to only that particular area and time. In many parts of the world oral histories and traditional knowledge accumulate over centuries, even millenias. However remote the area we have studied seems to, it does not cover only the traditional knowledge of one group, but usually inherited previous cultural knowledge or other peoples’ whom they have contacted. The plant seeds and the knowledge of cultivation and processes travels more rapidly in the past than expected, and people adopt plants quite easily sometimes just by curiosity. Finding traces of this make us astonish, such as facing a plant of the Far East origin, in a remote town of Anatolia, which is cultivated in a garden to make praying beads. Realizing how some of our cultural relations with some plants, such as tea and coffee developed far back in other countries and societies. The amount and rate of adopting plants from Americas just within a few centuries, such as potato, tomato, beans, tobacco, and corn are amazing. They become our daily ingredients, main crops, drugs which we can not think of living without. Some experiments of introducing medicinal plants into a forest shared by some tribes indicates that, local people quickly find out the medicinal properties of some of these plants by trial and error (Balick and Cox 1997). Several similar examples are recorded among the migrated workers to Europe, they gather plants in their new environment by tasting and checking to the similarities to the plants they know previously (Pieroni and Vandebroek 2007).

Main strengths of ethnobotanical studies lies not only its strong bridges with the past but with the means it provide to the lives of today’s people. More and more people wants to change the ridom of their lives, change the ways of living from the competitive, stressed cities and 'escape to the country'. Without the wealth of traditional knowledge of dealing with nature, living closer to nature and interacting with plants again seems not an easy job. The traditional knowledge can give valuable clues not only about our past but also today how we can get use of them, for living more nature friendly and protecting both the nature and our own health. Keeping the tradition alive might not be a bad idea.

Interpretations/ implications

Ethnobotanical findings provide important clues for a number of questions usually asked by archaeologists and archaeobotanists, such as:

Recent archaeobotanical studies provide some positive answers to the above questions:

References

To follow up on the refrences below please see the references page.

• Alexiades 1996
• Baytop 1994
• Berkes 2008
• Berlin and Berlin 2005
• Bernard 2002
• Buck and Thiers 1996 (in Alexaides)
• Chatwin 1988
• Cotton 1996
• Cunningham 1996 (in Alexaides)
• Ertug 2003b
• Ertug 2006
• Forman and Bridson 1989
• Grieve 1996
• Halling 1996 (in Alexaides)
• Hanlidou et al. 2004
• Hardy 2007
• Hather and Mason 2002
• Martin 1994
• Mears and Hillman 2007
• Medley and Kalibo 2005
• Nabhan 1985
• Peña-Chocarro et al. in press
• Phillips 1996 (in Alexaides)
• Pieroni and Vandebroek 2007
• Putscher and Vogl 2006
• Stepp 2005
• Thomas et al. 2007
• Ticktin et al. 2002
• Turner 2006
• Vogl et al. 2004
• Weller and Romney 1988
• Wickens 2001