Historical ethnobiology

Abstract

In this chapter, the reader will become familiar with the concept of historical ethnobiology. To that end, the manner in which research in this fi eld is conducted will be considered a point of conceptual refl ection. Preserved testimonies and written and iconographic sources (e.g., a manuscript document, a book, a painting, or a photography) will be considered key elements in the production of documents. It will be emphasized that the documents chosen by the researcher constitute elements that reveal traces of social memory in the present and that are taken to be corroborating documents of an interrelationship established between human beings and biota in a given time and space. Finally, this refl exive path will lead to the conclusion that the conceptual model of documentary analysis by which memory works is what allows the construction of ethnobiological information. In this way, it will be considered that the information that will compose the scientifi c discourse is based on a subject/object relation, which involves three dimensions: psychological action (subject), social action, and environment, all producing the material to memory (object).