Ethnobotany

Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make of use of indigenous plants. Ethnobotanists explore how plants are used for such things as food, shelter, medicine, clothing, hunting, and religious ceremonies. Ethnobotanists are usually botanists and/or biologists with additional training in such areas as archaeology, chemistry, ecology, anthropology, linguistics, history, pharmacology, sociology, religion and mythology.With such broad training, Ethnobotanists raise many interesting questions quite different in scope from those of previous generations of scientists trained in botany alone. This wide-ranging vision is reflected in the cutting-edge research contained in this book's chapters.Selected Contents: Recent Origin and Cultural Reversion of a HunterGatherer Group; Medicinal Plants Used by Tibetans in Shangri-la, Yunnan, China; Crop Changes From the XVI Century to the Present in a Hill/Mountain Area of Eastern Liguria (Italy); Valorizing the 'Irulas' Traditional Knowledge of Medicinal Plants in the Kodiakkarai Reserve Forest, India; Naming a Phantom The Quest to Find the Identity of Ulluchu, an Unidentified Ceremonial Plant of the Moche Culture in Northern Peru; Extending the Temporal Context of Ethnobotanical Databases: The Case Study of the Campania Region (Southern Italy); Arginine, Scurvy and Cartier's ""Tree of Life""; Shadows of the Colonial Past Diverging Plant Use in Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador; Ethnobotany in the Nepal Himalaya; The Plants, Rituals and Spells That 'Cured' Helminthiasis in Sicily; Wild Leafy Vegetables: A Study of Their Subsistence Dietetic Support to the Inhabitants of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, India; Traditional Knowledge of Wild Edible Plants Used in Palestine (Northern West Bank): A Comparative Study; Uses of Medicinal Plants by Haitian Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Province of Camagüey, Cuba; Index