Under the direction of Dr. Fiona Marshall, MS. Elizabeth Hildebrand will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will conduct anthropological investigation among the Sheko people of southwestern Ethiopia to study the methods they employ to cultivate enset and other local crops. Agriculture arose independently, at roughly the same time in several areas in both the Old and New World. Regions such as the Andean highlands, Middle America, the Near East and China are relatively well known to archaeologists because their main domesticates - potatoes, corn, wheat and rice - form Western dietary staples. Although few Ethiopian food crops, with the exception of coffee, are well known outside the immediate region, a number of plants were domesticated and several play an important local subsistence role there. Enset is a root crop domesticated in prehistoric times. It contains an edible tuber which grows to one meter in diameter and an edible stalk. It is eaten widely across Ethiopia and provides the main source of sustenance for a large population in the southwestern portion of the country. Throughout most of Ethiopia famers follow a settled way of life and practice intensive agriculture, planting on terraces constructed in some case over thousands of years. In this context the Sheko are highly unusual because they are mobile, plant only small fields and move often. They also live in an area where undomesticated enset occurs and thus are probably close to the source of domestication. They also, quite likely, follow the subsistence strategies of early farmers and thus are of great archaeological interest. Over the course of her fieldwork MS Hildebrand will collect basic demographic and social data. She will conduct an intensive study of enset cultivation and use and also note Sheko farming approaches to other endemic plant species. She will collect samples of both domesticated and wild plant species and determine weedy taxa present in agricultural fields and other humanly altered environments. Since root crops are rarely preserved in the archaeological record, she will search for associated cultural and biological indicators of enset cultivation which might be preserved in such a context. The research is important for several reasons. Anthropologists wish to understand the processes which led to the domestication of plants and animals because this transition from hunting and gathering set the stage which led to the development of complex societies. The Sheko offer an important opportunity for potential insight into this process. The specific results of her work will also be of direct interest and use to archaeologists who work in Eastern Africa. The project will assist in training a promising young scientist.
