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In the past two decades, ethnobiologists have increasingly paid attention to the scouting and documentation of endangered corpora of local food elements and associated traditional knowledge. In this endeavor, food scouting encompasses the methodological tools used for mapping, inventorying, and documenting food and food-related resources. The growing body of research in this field is shedding light on the potentialities of these practices in obtaining baseline data regarding food heritage, which can, in turn, empower local communities in their dynamic understanding and safeguarding of this resource. While food scouting have been gaining an important role in current food and gastronomic ethnobiological research, as well as in other fields of study (e.g., geography and anthropology), little attention has been paid thus far to the methods and approaches underpinning these activities. To partially fill this gap, this contribution aims to tackle some methodological issues connected to the documentation of food and gastronomic elements embedded in local knowledge. Acknowledging the plethora of methods applicable in food scouting research, we describe three specific applications of food scouting to elicit data on local food diversity, highlighting their prospects and limitations. The first case addresses market surveys to obtain baseline data on the local food systems and their associated diversity, the second focuses on context-based freelisting methods for eliciting wild food plant uses, and the third discusses methods for scouting and inventorying artisanal food products. Acknowledging the contributions of Justin Nolan to the advancement of methods in the field of ethnobiology, we suggest that the methodological toolkit of food scouting should include ad hoc transdisciplinary platforms codesigned together with local food actors.

Maya Q’eqchi’ villagers of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala fathom local indicators of climate change keenly. In a small-holder, maize-based, horticultural village, ethnographic interviews with village experts in hunting, agricultural production, and animal husbandry, and with non-expert/lay villagers recounted that many local climate- and subsistence-related activities and some traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) correspond to annual cycles or seasons. This research documents the local queues and timing of residents’ practices as a baseline for monitoring subsequent years’ activities and climate-related observations based on our interpretation of emic views, practices, and traditions. Using focus groups, we collected such traditional indicators to design a visual representation of a seasonal calendar, which we present herein. This seasonal calendar is a locally accessible tool to document monthly climate observations, agricultural and home garden activities, hunting, animal raising, and cultural activities during a complete annual cycle. We supplement observational and focus group data with semi-structured interview data about subsequent changes in weather patterns, which villagers identify as resulting from climate change. We suggest that Maya Q’eqchi’ villagers are active in their acknowledgment of climate change and are taking steps to document its effects on locally significant cultural activities, exemplifying Q’eqchi’ cultural capacity to adapt to ecological changes and to promote local resilience and cultural vitality. We demonstrate how seasonal calendars and the methods to create them may contribute to local and global understandings of TEK and climate change and annotate conventional anthropological methods as considerations for creating seasonal calendars in other cultural and ecological communities.

The identification of plants according to the Linnaean system of taxonomy is a cornerstone of ethnobotany, allowing the discipline to be a comparative science. To accomplish plant identification, ethnobotanists have long relied on the collection of voucher specimens and their deposition in herbaria. Here we critically analyze the role of botanical collecting in ethnobotany and bring attention to a range of issues that can complicate, and sometimes hamper, the practice. In lieu of traditional herbarium specimens, the collection of photographic vouchers and their deposition in digital repositories is proposed as an alternative method for ethnobotanical research. The ever-improving quality and ubiquity of smartphone cameras, photographic citizen science applications like Pl@ntnet and iNaturalist, and deep learning techniques of automated photo identification are discussed as elements that are contributing to a slow revolution in the role of digital data in the field sciences. Guidelines for when plant herbarium specimens versus photographic vouchers should be considered required are laid out. Although botanical collecting will doubtless and with good reason remain a foundational practice in ethnobotany, we present the use of photographic vouchers as a valid, scientifically rigorous and, in some situations, preferred method of identification.

Paleoethnobotany and ethnobotany are closely intertwined. Ethnobotany provides a key interpretive framework for understanding past plant–people interrelationships through the archaeological record, and this understanding of the past provides the foundation for understanding present-day relationships between people and the natural world.

Methods of field work include (among others) frame elicitation, semistructured interviews, questionnaires, short interviews, depth interviews, walks, and visual documentation. These are discussed and evaluated here, with field experiences nuancing practice.

Several ethnobiological studies have used the Jaccard Index, a qualitative, binary measure, to compare group similarities and differences in lists of plant and animal species, medicinals, foods, cultural utilities, and so on. We extend this effort by formulating the Nolan Index, a new, more precise quantitative measure of the relative frequency of listed items to compare similarities and differences between groups . It is deployed here to evaluate the degree of similarity of free-listed, wild plants between novices and experts in rural Missouri.

To explore the process through which people develop knowledge about socioecological change, this article describes a mixed-methods toolkit containing a technique for making maps in real time while moving through landscapes. The quantitative component of the toolkit is grounded in ethnobiologists’ embeddedness in place-based communities and harnesses the power of global positioning systems (GPS). As GPS-wielding ethnobiologists engage in participatory mapping by moving through landscapes with their research collaborators, we can use handheld devices and simultaneously communicate with satellites in outer space to produce maps in real time. Within the existing, large inventory of ethnobiological methods, using handheld GPS devices can be combined with other types of data-collecting techniques to enhance studies of interactions in more-than-human landscapes. Moreover, mapmaking implements movement trace, a tactic for interpreting space-time cultures and documenting grounded experiences with socioecological change. By bringing together interests in the disciplines of ethnobiology and qualitative geographic information systems (GIS), this article describes methods that make it possible to explain the space-time culture that guides people to move through their homelands and to communicate about their experiences even as they work toward integrating and directing the changing circumstances of their lives.

Environmental justice studies (EJS) provides a framework for interdisciplinary research and advocacy in the realm of cultural heritage research and management. Ethnobiologists, in particular those who focus on environmental archaeology, are no strangers to the heritage arena as our scholarship commonly concerns “cultural keystone places,” which are rich with meaning for one or more groups of people. Three dimensions and three core concepts of EJS can serve as guideposts to research centering on these significant places. These EJS concepts align and intersect with core principles of historical ecology (HE), particularly through the study of landscapes as complex systems. This paper highlights how environmental justice and HE can be conceptually integrated. This EJS-HE framework is relevant to research design in environmental archaeology and more broadly ethnobiology, a framing to be adopted at the beginning of the research process that explicitly considers whether a research question is ethical to approach within a particular heritage context.

Dogs' relationship with humans is pervasive and familiar, and human-dog social bonds serve multiple functions. Yet the breadth and depth of this variation is poorly understood. This study considers our coevolutionary relationship in cross-cultural context as a self-organizing system of mutual-attraction between complementary species. We analyzed Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) texts to develop three scales of dog-human relationships: dogs' utility for humans (DUH), humans' utility for dogs (HUD), and personhood of dogs (PD). Using multilevel regression analyses of data from 844 ethnographers in 144 cultures, we evaluated multiple hypotheses for dog-human coevolution, including: influence of ecological constraints (temperature and pathogen stress), subsistence systems (hunting-agriculture continuum, livestock production), resource defense (intergroup violence, crime), and gendered-relationships (dog affiliation with men and women). Ambient temperature and pathogens showed the strongest and most consistent effects on DUH, HUD, and PD. Mutual-utility and dog-personhood increased as temperature decreased. Pathogens showed non-linear effects: outcomes increased with pathogens up to moderate-high levels, then decreased at higher levels, suggesting zoonotic infection risk. DUH, HUD, and PD were positively associated with hunting and negatively associated with food production. Intergroup violence was positively associated with dog-personhood, but not mutual-utility. Affiliation with adults was positively associated with all three outcomes; however, women showed a significantly stronger effect than men on HUD and personhood. We place these quantitative results in ethnographic context. Together these data suggest dog-human coevolution was constrained by ecological factors, enhanced by cooperative hunting and resource defense, and disproportionately influenced by dogs' relationships with women.

Small-scale poultry rearing provides a livelihood for many households around the globe and is a means for women to contribute to household income while raising children. We present an ethnozoological and ethnographic case study of smallholder Guatemalan fisher-farmers of two villages in which ethnic Ladino residents are increasingly reliant on raising birds. Data comes from direct and participant observation of all families in both villages, as well as from multiple in-depth informal and semi-formal interviews with 13 key consultants and a total of 48 semi-structured ethnographic interviews with village poultry raisers. We found that women are the primary caretakers of poultry in the villages and that poultry provide a source of extra income for women, when needed, and an important source of nutrients for the household. In addition, the consumption of poultry has high sociocultural value for celebrations and holidays. The greatest constraints on family poultry systems in the villages are reoccurring diseases (including Newcastle) that devastate flocks and that have been increasing in frequency over time. However, access to effective and appropriate treatment for poultry disease is limited in the area. We suggest village vaccination campaigns led by women as a means to decrease loss of poultry flocks and, thus, assure livelihood and food security for poultry-rearing households.

Humans and other living organisms harbor disease-causing pathogenic microorganisms. These microorganisms are often transmitted through physical contact with contaminated objects, such as food, water, or other people. While some theoretical and empirical research examines the ontogeny of contamination and contagion beliefs, cross-cultural research on this topic is limited. To help remedy this paucity of data, we conducted an ethnobiological study of contagion and contamination beliefs among Maasai children (n = 42) in the Simanjiro district, Tanzania. Participants include 36 middle-aged schoolchildren and six four-year-olds. We contrast the children's beliefs with those of 12 local adults. To measure children's views of contagion and contamination, we developed sentence-framed yes/no elicitation tasks using three different stimuli—a fly, a cough, and a cough from someone with respiratory symptoms. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to further understand children's ethnotheories of contamination and contagion. Children generally reported that coughs and flies are directly contaminating, whereas they offered mixed results for associational and indirect contamination. Children discussed time, psychological contagion, saliva, wind, and the supernatural/natural as key elements to their beliefs, reasons, and personal actions taken to minimize contamination/contagion risk. We found education to be significantly positively correlated with children reporting that flies and coughs were directly contaminating, while age had no effect. Although children were more likely than adults to associate flies with contamination, their general belief pattern differs little from adults. Local cultural-ecological factors and explanatory models of disease, as well as formal religious and education institutions, shape Maasai children's ethnobiological beliefs of contagions and contamination.

Subsistence horticulturalists learn considerable local ecological knowledge by early adulthood. We investigate the relationship between children's family environments and learning of their plant environment. In a rural village in Dominica, West Indies, children of ages four through 17 (N = 51) participated in a “plant trail” along a route containing 50 core local plants marked for identification. Plants in question resulted from village adults’ freelists on members of local plant domains found via nominal group technique (i.e., trees, staple foods, vegetables, condiments, medicines, and ornamentals). Individual children's ethnobotanical knowledge was assessed through proper plant identification with a local term. Findings indicate that children learn botanical domains differentially. They identify trees and staple crop plants early in life. As they develop, they learn other plant domains, and trees and staples decrease in proportion to total ethnobotanical knowledge. Boys retain a larger proportion of tree knowledge, as tree care is part of the masculine labor division. Children's, especially girls’, proportion of medicinal plant knowledge grows steadily into adulthood. As predicted, children with homes in extended family compounds demonstrate more ethnobotanical knowledge than children whose neighbors are not close kin. Contrary to predictions, a father's presence in the household is not an indicator of the children's plant identification ability. Having younger siblings predicts learning more plants. Trees form a smaller proportion of total plant knowledge for family-compound-living children and those with lower birth order, who tend to have greater overall ethnobotanical knowledge. Ethnobotanical learning relates to gender, birth order, and extended kin access.

Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is the traditional staple food of Sidama people who live in Rift Valley lowlands to highlands in southwest Ethiopia. Enset is drought resistant, but it matures slowly, requires substantial manure inputs from cattle, and intensive processing. Maize, introduced to Sidamaland in the mid-twentieth century, is common in midlands and lowlands. Maize matures rapidly and provides more kcal/kg than enset, but it is prone to failure in dry years and requires chemical fertilizer, which is subject to global market price fluctuations. We compare cultural ecology, productivity, failure, and resilience of enset and maize in 410 farms across four Sidama ecological zones. The risks and benefits of enset and maize are complexly associated with variable local environments. Enset offers drought-resistant produce that, with sufficient manure inputs, is adequate for subsistence in the wet highlands, but its performance is more variable elsewhere. Fertilized, maize yields larger harvests than enset, but vulnerability to rainfall and global processes create special challenges. Maize and enset appear to be in different adaptive cycle phases: maize grows quickly and maize farms rebounded from crop loss within four years. Only half of enset farms recovered within six years after crop failure, complicating farming decisions in an environment with tremendous localized variation. In general, the Sidama zone shows a pattern of regional diversity with local specialization for maize only, enset only, or mixed maize and enset cultivation. In some areas maize has become a preferred crop and food for younger people.

In freelists, informants create an inventory of all the items they know within a given category. Freelists reveal cultural salience and variation in individuals’ topical knowledge. The ease and accuracy of freelist interviewing makes it ideal for collecting data on local knowledge from relatively large samples. This method, however, does not work well with broad topical areas: People tend to omit some items and cluster responses as they unpack mental subcategories. Successive freelisting can reduce and redefine topics (domains), thus focusing the content of interviews. In oral freelists, interviewers should prevent bystanders from contaminating the informant’s list, and written freelists are advisable in literate communities. Responses from freelists should be cross-checked with informal methods as much as practicable, as in this Caribbean case. With proper attention to detail, freelisting can amass high-quality ethnobotanical data.

Monogamy appears to have become the predominant human mating system with the emergence of highly unequal agricultural populations that replaced relatively egalitarian horticultural populations, challenging the conventional idea—based on the polygyny threshold model—that polygyny should be positively associated with wealth inequality. To address this polygyny paradox, we generalize the standard polygyny threshold model to a mutual mate choice model predicting the fraction of women married polygynously. We then demonstrate two conditions that are jointly sufficient to make monogamy the predominant marriage form, even in highly unequal societies. We assess if these conditions are satisfied using individual-level data from 29 human populations. Our analysis shows that with the shift to stratified agricultural economies: (i) the population frequency of relatively poor individuals increased, increasing wealth inequality, but decreasing the frequency of individuals with sufficient wealth to secure polygynous marriage, and (ii) diminishing marginal fitness returns to additional wives prevent extremely wealthy men from obtaining as many wives as their relative wealth would otherwise predict. These conditions jointly lead to a high population-level frequency of monogamy.