Since 2023, botanists and archaeologists in Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the US have been constructing an open-source, physical and digital, ethno- and archaeobotanical comparative collection of wild plants. Without such a resource, many questions of profound importance for understanding human history cannot be studied adequately, including changing diets, the emergence and spread of domesticated plants, and human impacts on ecosystems. This collection has been incorporated into the global herbarium network to ensure that the materials are identified and curated properly, remain freely accessible to scholars from Africa and elsewhere, and can be expanded modularly. In order to address persistent inequalities in access to basic scientific resources that have been structured by global North-South relations, our aim is to establish best practices for scholarly, cultural, and ethical propriety in the creation of these and similar comparative collections. This talk will outline how this collection has been built, how it is being used, and the possibilities for collaboration with other fields interested in African history, including linguistics.
Matthew Knisley (Wed,) studied this question.