The purpose of this project is to improve the training of undergraduates on methods of ethnoscience as practiced by archaeologists. Equipment is specifically being used in the study of Late Prehistoric (A.D. 400-1500) subsistence change in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Students learn to identify types of carbonized plant remains recovered from archaeological sites and to interpret the significance of assemblages changing through time during the transition from a foraging to an agricultural lifeway. Undergraduates also apply the latest analytical procedures to archaeobotanical remains from several important sites.
