Dissertation Research: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Enset Cultivation and Plant Use Among the Sheko of Southwest Ethiopia

在菲奥娜马歇尔博士的指导下，伊丽莎白·希尔德布兰德女士将为她的博士论文收集数据。她将对埃塞俄比亚西南部的Sheko人进行人类学调查，研究他们种植enset和其他当地作物的方法。农业独立地兴起，几乎在同一时间在旧大陆和新大陆的几个地区兴起。安第斯高地、中美洲、近东和中国等地区相对为考古学家所熟知，因为它们的主要驯化作物--土豆、玉米、小麦和大米--构成了西方的斯台普斯。虽然除了咖啡之外，埃塞俄比亚的粮食作物很少在邻近地区以外广为人知，但一些植物被驯化，其中一些在当地发挥着重要的生存作用。Enset是一种在史前时代就被驯化的块根作物。它含有一个可食用的块茎，直径可达一米，还有一个可食用的茎。它在埃塞俄比亚各地广泛食用，并为该国西南部的大量人口提供了主要的食物来源。 在埃塞俄比亚的大多数农民遵循定居的生活方式和实践集约农业，在某些情况下建造了数千年的梯田种植。在这种情况下，Sheko人是非常不寻常的，因为他们是移动的，只种植小块土地，而且经常移动。它们也生活在未驯化的巢群发生的地区，因此可能接近驯化的来源。他们也很可能遵循早期农民的生存策略，因此具有很大的考古学意义。在她的实地考察过程中，希尔德布兰德女士将收集基本的人口和社会数据。她将进行深入的研究，镶嵌种植和使用，并指出Sheko农业的方法，以其他特有的植物物种。她将收集驯化和野生植物物种的样本，并确定在农田和其他人为改变的环境中存在的杂草类群。由于块根作物很少在考古记录中保存下来，她将寻找可能在这种情况下保存下来的嵌入式种植的相关文化和生物指标。 这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。人类学家希望了解导致植物和动物驯化的过程，因为这种从狩猎和采集的过渡为复杂社会的发展奠定了基础。Sheko为深入了解这一过程提供了重要机会。她工作的具体成果也将直接引起在东非工作的考古学家的兴趣和使用。该项目将有助于培养一名有前途的青年科学家。

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.