Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ethnobotanical Knowledge Acquisition Among Tsimane Children

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Ethnobotanical knowledge of indigenous people is fast disappearing. Therefore, it is important to document this information before it is lost to science. Such research helps to ensure that information about plant usefulness is recordetd. It also helps us to understand how knowledge more generally is learned and transmitted over generations. Graduate student Maria-Ruth Martinez, supervised by Dr. Brent Berlin, will undertake research on the ethnobotanical knowledge of the Tsimane, a relatively isolated indigenous people who live in lowland Amazonia Bolivia.Martinez will study the knowledge of children, a population often overlooked in ethnobotanical studies. About 200 children (ages 7-15) and their parents will be asked to participate so that she can investigate the theoretical and practical ethnobotanical knowledge of Tsimane children, their social and experiential contexts for learning, and their specific acquisition patterns. The research will use a mixed-methods approach, including participant observation, free-listing, semi-structured interviews, ethnobotanical collections, ethnobotanical knowledge tests, and time allocation scans. Hypotheses to be tested are: H1: A child''s ethnobotanical knowledge will bear a positive association with the ethnobotanical knowledge of the same sex parent; H2: A child''s ethnobotanical knowledge will bear a positive association with the ethnobotanical knowledge of his/her siblings; H3: The amount of time a child spends with his/her same sex parent and siblings will be positively associated with the child''s ethnobotanical knowledge; H4: There will be a positive interaction effect on a child''s ethnobotanical knowledge between parental and siblings ethnobotanical knowledge (H1-H2) and time spent with these figures (H3); H5: The relative amount of time a child spends interacting with nature will be positively associated with the child''s ethnobotanical knowledge; and, H6: There is a pattern to which plant knowledge is acquired during childhood. This research is important because it will contribute to understanding how children learn, it will document endangered ethnobotanical knowledge, it will help to develop better strategies for conserving ethnobotanical knowledge, and it will contribute to the education of a female social scientist from an under represented group.