Doors open at 12 noon with refreshments. Meeting begins at 1:00 pm.
Title: What Archeobotany Can Tell Us About Ancient Texas (and other places too)
Speaker: Dr. Leslie L. Bush, Paleoethnobotanist
Abstract:
The Texas plants we enjoy today have been used for food, medicine, and crafts for millennia by the Native people of Texas. Written accounts by Spanish missionaries and European explorers, Native oral traditions, and archaeological investigations provide windows into the many fascinating uses of our Texas native plants. I’ll outline how archaeologists recover and identify plant remains and talk about particular finds in central Texas of plants used for food, fibers, dye, healing, and weapons.
[kadence_slider id=”4821″]Bio:
Leslie L. Bush is a paleoethnobotanist, an archaeologist who specializes in identifying bits of plants preserved on archaeological sites, usually in the form of charcoal and occasionally as waterlogged wood or other plant parts. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University in 2001, and her dissertation was published by the University of Alabama Press. Through her consulting practice, Macrobotanical Analysis, she has worked on sites in eighteen states including Maryland, Florida, Iowa, Montana, Indiana, and Texas. Leslie is currently involved with investigations associated with the improvement of Highway 271 in Titus County, Baylor University’s work at rockshelters in central Texas, and the Texas Historical Commission’s work on Fort St. Louis/Presidio La Bahia.