A Review on Upper Palaeolithic (U.P) Care (original) (raw)

Evaluating the potential for more in-depth research on medicinal plant use in Upper Palaeolithic

2022

This dissertation aims to demonstrate the potential of medicinal plants use as a regular method of treatment in Upper Palaeolithic care. This will be carried out by recording and analysing the use of medicinal plants from sites with Upper Palaeolithic plant assemblages. Three of these archaeological sites (Ohalo 2 (Israel), Ghar-e Boof (Iran) and Cova de les Cendres(Spain) will be critically assessed for medicinal plant use. The medicinal properties of these plants in combination with local ethnographic knowledge will be used to help understand how Palaeolithic people might have processed and used these plants for their ailments. The data from these U.P. sites provided a strong argument for medicinal plant use in treating wounds, coughs and possibly as birth control. The factors most likely driving medicinal plant choice and who might have administered them are dependent on that society’ world view, their social structure, genetics, and climate.

Engaged Palaeoethnobotany on the Northern Plains: A Compelling Future for Medicinal Plant Research

2020

The University of Saskatchewan Department of Archaeology & Anthropology became the first academic department in Canada to publicly offer a Statement on Reconciliation. Most archaeologists recognize our colonial past and agree we need to expand our focus to incorporate better the thoughts, actions, and desires of the descendant communities of those who produced the material and nonmaterial remains we study. As a subdiscipline of archaeology, palaeoethnobotany with its emphasis on traditional plant use is well-positioned to engage fully with descendant communities. The Northern Plains would seem an ideal candidate for such research, given the rarity of existing palaeoethnobotanical research and the apparent absence of engaged research on medicinal plants. Current literature on the Northern Plains does include various ethnobotanical accounts, including discussion of plants with medicinal purposes. Though rare, there are also a few palaeoethnobotanical studies, which typically incorpora...

HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF BOTANICAL MEDICINE

This chapter reviews the history, biology, and epistemology of medicinal plants as used by human beings and their primate, other mammalian, and other vertebrate ancestors. Focusing on prehistoric, classical, and ethnographic examples, it delineates the careful selective process by which people selected plants for use, it considers why plants are useful at all, and it describes some of the varying human logic of plant use. It concludes with some recommendations on how (but not whether) scientists should examine nature for additional botanical medicines.