Session: #774

Content:

Woodlands have been one of the main suppliers of raw materials for many purposes all along history. Wood, bark, resin, leaves, fibres, fungi, moss, tubers, has been gathered to fulfil many different human needs. Therefore, many societies developed specific technologies to acquire, manage, transform and use these resources. Forests provided raw materials to cover a wide range of necessities: food, buildings, clothes or tools, but they also provided other more perishable materials employed for waterproofing, dying, tinning, medicine, adhesives, among many others. All these technological processes and uses are commonly difficult to observe the archaeological record, even invisible to archaeologists. Some materials are only preserved charred or in anaerobic conditions in very exceptional sites, or leave a very fine hint within e.g. containers. As a consequence, they have received less attention than plant foods or firewood. This session aims to provide an overview of technological uses of plants along different periods and among different societies, trying to answer questions such as: how societies organized woodland management and acquisition of raw material; how societies organized transformation and consumption of these resources; how tools and goods were produced; how an interdisciplinary research will improve the study of the production and consumption of goods and tools made of plants. We welcome contributions dealing with study cases, methods and techniques to approach the study of these remains, experimental and ethnoarchaeological approaches to generate hypothesis and models for understanding the technologies of goods production, as well as their significance in social and economic terms.

Session: #774

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