Dr. Prachaya Srisanga from the Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden in Thailand examines a specimen collected by Dr. Joyce White more than 40 years ago from the Ban Chiang region. Photo by Kellie O’Brien
When most people think of archaeology, they think about buried remains of buildings, or perhaps discovering skeletons or mummies. However, archaeology also has a nature-loving side, which would be archaeobotany. Archaeobotany is the study of plants from the past and their uses.
Although Dr. Srisanga is studying a whole specimen, much of Year of Botany’s work also looked at much smaller samples, including seeds and particulate plant remains. To study these, Dr. White’s museum blog post writes:
Foremost among these dimensions is archaeobotany and its important focus on studying ancient seeds (called “macrobotanical remains”) recovered during excavations. Specialists study those remains, and in 2024, the Penn Museum’s Ban Chiang Project was able to bring archaeobotanist Dr. Cristina Castillo from University College London to the Museum to conduct “flotation” of bags of dirt that had lived in the Penn Museum subbasement since almost 40 years ago. As the Director of the Ban Chiang Project at Penn, I have been a “mother hen” to those bags over the decades, preserving them for the opportunity for just such a study.
Kittiyaporn Sukprasong, an intern from Mahidol University, floating a sediment sample from Ban Chiang
Many samples of flot drying in the spring breeze before further observation
The analyses of the flot (flotation results) allowed YOB to study farming patterns in certain areas, plant population density for things like weeds, and other insights.
The Penn Museum’s full post can be accessed here: https://www.penn.museum/blog/the-science-of-seeds/