via Penn Museum, 16 July 2024: The Penn Museum’s Year of Botany has a feature on archaeobotany, specifically, at Ban Chiang, where students were trained in flotation techniques to study ancient plant remains. This research, led by Dr. Cristina Castillo, reveals insights into the region’s agricultural history through seeds and other organic materials.
Surprisingly, despite the fact that most organic remains vanish in an archaeological record, the practice of archaeology has many botanical dimensions. The Penn Museum is highlighting three main areas—archaeobotany, ethnobotany, and ethnographic plant-based material culture—in our Year of Botany at Ban Chiang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site excavated by the Museum from 1974 to 1975.
Foremost among these dimensions is archaeobotany and its important focus on studying ancient seeds (called “macrobotanical remains”) recovered during excavations. Specialists study those remains, and in 2024, the Penn Museum’s Ban Chiang Project was able to bring archaeobotanist Dr. Cristina Castillo from University College London to the Museum to conduct “flotation” of bags of dirt that had lived in the Penn Museum subbasement since almost 40 years ago.
Source: The Science of Seeds
