Dissertation Research: Rescuing a Rare Endangered Body of Knowledge: A Field Study of Hoti Ethnobotany

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This project involves the dissertation research of an anthropology student from the University of Georgia. The student will study the ethnobotanical knowledge of a forest-dwelling group in the Venezuelan Amazon, and will document the ways the community exploits, cognizes, and constructs symbolic and spiritual meanings for the vegetable resources in their environment. The hypothesis to be tested is that the predominantly foraging communities have a less developed knowledge of their botanical environment than do fully horticultural peoples. The reasons advanced in the literature are that the increased knowledge functions as insurance against crop failure; that more sedentary residence allows greater knowledge; and that human disturbance actually augments local biodiversity. The project will examine these hypotheses through this test case, and the degree of ethnobotanical knowledge of this group will be compared against that of other native Amazonian groups in the literature. This project is important because it will add to our knowledge about the rapidly disappearing tropical forest of this region, as well as advance our understanding of how people construct cultural images and understandings of the natural world. In addition it will add understanding of this important region of the world to our nation's knowledge base.