Reconnecting Indigenous Knowledge to the Sunlight Basin: Integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Archaeology
Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) specific to plants has been developed over long-term connections to the environment, diligent observations, and practical experience by Indigenous communities. The traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples is a vital source for the contextualization and further understanding of past human environmental relationships in the Sunlight Basin of northwestern Wyoming. The Eastern Shoshone people, among many other groups, traditionally occupied the Sunlight Basin of northwestern Wyoming, a region of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. There is a growing necessity for collaboration with Indigenous populations within archaeological and anthropological research. The aim of this project is to develop a synthesized body of work that incorporates traditional plant harvesting practices and the general plant knowledge of the Eastern Shoshone community, supported by historic ethnographic research, contemporary ethnographic interviews, plant surveys, and post excavation paleoethnobotanical analysis. These lines of investigation and support the traditional ecological knowledge of local and Indigenous communities. The collaboration of these three modes of investigation will reveal that TEK can contextualize cultural landscapes by providing highly specialized details about local ecosystems.
Source: The Mathematics Enthusiast
Author: Liz Dolinar
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2997955407