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Ellis Library Sourcepack for Anthropology 220/310
Plants and People

Instructor: Deborah Pearsall  pearsalld@missouri.edu
107 Swallow Hall, 882-3038

 

background information

Reference Books   These books are kept in the Reference area of Ellis Library and may not be checked out.

Cambridge World History of Food. Ref. TX 353.C255 2000.  2 vols.  Of particular interest are the following multichapter parts: "Determining What Our Ancestors Ate," "Domesticated Plants and Animals," "Dietary Liquids," "Food and Drink Around the World," "History, Nutrition and Health," and "A Dictionary of the World's Plant Foods."
Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology.  Ref. GN 307.E52 1996.  The 4+ page entry on Ethnobotany in vol. 2 has a short bibliography.  There are also entries on Ethnomedicine, Ethnopharmacology, Food & Diet, S. America, and Tropical Forest, which could be helpful.
Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life (4 vols).  Ref. GN 333.W67 1998.  Entries are for individual peoples ("Hindus of Guyana") or countries ("Guatamalans") and always have at least a couple paragraphs on foodways.
Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Social Life (1 vol.)  Ref GN 25.C65 1994. The essay on "The Diet and Nutrition of Human Populations," by Igor de Garine, is organized by use and contains lots of information on cultural meanings and a substantial bibliography.
Nectar and Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food Mythology (1 vol). Ref GR 498.A53 2000.  Organized by food.
Encyclopedia of Taboos (1 vol).  Ref GN 471.4 H653 2000.  The eleven-page "food taboos" entry references many cultures, contains a list of references at the end, and is followed by a half-page on "foods forbidden to Brahamins."

Reference Websites

There are many sites on the web that are supposed to contain ethnobotanical information.  Many of them are simply lists of links that have not stayed terribly up to date.  Some good sites may be found by simply doing a Google.com search and checking carefully for academic authorship.  This list will concentrate mostly on a third type of web-based information that is both information rich and not simple to stumble upon through a specific keyword search in Google and other search engines: the free online database.

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Plants Database of the U.S. http://plants.usda.gov/  

Although it is more "straight botany" (scientific names, species information, distribution maps, etc. than ethnobotany), this database does have a section called "culturally significant plants" at http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/topics.cgi?earl=cultural.cgi. Once in this section, be sure to click on the "plant guide" for the ethnobotanical information on the plant.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> Native American Ethnobotany:  http://herb.umd.umich.edu/

This site is a "database of plants used as drugs, foods, fibers, dyes and more by native Peoples of North America."  Its entries are now also linked to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Plants Database.  <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]-->

Anthropological Index Online http://www.rai.anthropology.org.uk/index/aio.html

Available through the British Museum and the Royal Anthropological Institute, this database indexes articles published in the field of anthropology, this international index lets you know about academic articles published in the field of anthropology over many years.  A keyword search on manioc produced 17 references, some of them in English, some not.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database http://ip.aaas.org/tekindex.nsf
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The Traditional Ecological Knowledge Prior Art Database (TEK*PAD) "is an index and search engine of existing Internet-based, public domain documentation concerning indigenous knowledge and plant species uses." It provides links to taxonomic data, ethnobotanical information, academic abstracts and articles, and other resources intended to facilitate research on traditional ecological knowledge. The database itself may be searched easily by keywords, plant names, medicinal application, geographical region, or cultural/ ethnic group. <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]-->

Agricultural Research Service's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database  http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/ethnobot.html

Be sure to know the genus name and, if applicable, also the species name, of the plant about which you want information before checking this database.  Results are pretty bare-bones - just one-or-two-word labels for the medicinal uses ascribed to the plants (i.e. "asthma" without reference to any group of people who use it for this purpose), next to what presumably is the last name of a researcher who has written on the topic, but nothing more.

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Oriental Institute, University of Chicago: Archaeological Reports http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/OI_Archaeology.html

This site contains full-text archaeological reports that include paleoethnobotanical information -- where plant-related artifacts were found at the site, and inferences about their use.

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Anthro.net http://www.anthro.net/

According to its introductory page, "Anthro.Net queries a database of over 40,000 pages from reviewed web sites with anthropological content built by users' interests. The system collects the search terms submitted by its users and uses proprietary software to hunt down internet based journal articles, well developed topical sites and bibliographic references for anthropology, archaeology and the other social sciences."  However, its ethnobotany section is a bit slim, with several dead links.  The list of books there may be more helpful.

Anthropomorphemics http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/glossary/index2.html

A fast and handy online anthropological glossary/dictionary.

Ethnobotany of the Peruvian Amazon http://www.biopark.org/Plants-Amazon.html

This site has some links to plant descriptions plus cultural uses of the plant in Peru.  The author of the site shows no credentials, but does post a bibliography of recent books used to create the small database, and these books themselves may be helpful.

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The Human Dentition http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/walker/dentition/dentition.html
A very specialized site with lots of photos of teeth. Users select an individual tooth from a table, play the corresponding video clip, and then conduct a three-dimensional examination of that tooth. Currently 52 incisors, canines, premolars, and molars are available for viewing.

The MERLIN library catalog may be scoped for this campus only, or to search books available for quick loan from other campuses.  To find books available for interlibrary loan from other states, use Worldcat.

Finding Articles: Online index databases and Print Index

These indexes are for finding articles in scholarly journals, as well as some full-text scholarly articles and even book-length treatises.  All the databases may be found, in alphabetical order, on the MU Libraries List of Databases.

Human Relations Area File (HRAF)  This database contains a good deal of full-text ethnographic writing about a selected group of world cultures.  When you go to the search form, be sure to use the Help sections regarding subject codes.  Do not ignore them. 

Biological Abstracts  This database is primarily a science index database, but also contains a lot of material relevant to anthropology.  You will find references to articles in the scientific journal literature here, though there will not always be a link to the full text.  If there is no full text, copy the name of the journal in which an article that interests you was published, open a new window, go to the Electronic Journals link from the MU Libraries homepage, and paste the journal name into the search box.  If we have access to an e-version of the journal, it will come up, and you can link into it.  If we do not have such access, open a third window and check the journal title in the MERLIN catalog.  You can access this database from outside the library; if asked for a login and password, use your PawPrint.

CABDirect.  This is another science database that could still have relevant anthropological article references in it.  To get full text of articles, see the instructions for Biological Abstracts above. You can access this database from outside the library; if asked for a login and password, use your PawPrint.

BioOne  BioOne BioOne provides full-text access to approximately 60 bioscience journals published by small societies and noncommercial publishers.


In paper indexes, I'd suggest Abstracts in Anthropology, Ref. GN1.A15.  It indexes the more general anthropolgy publications, though I didn't see the Journal of Economic Botany in the list of journals indexed.  Unlike a database, it must be searched one year at a time.

Good luck!  Find something interesting!

 

This SOURCEPACK is a service of Ellis Library
Librarian/Webmaster: Rachel Brekhus
Last updated: September, 2002