Funk Foundation Fellowships for Archaeological Research

Research Results

Investigating Differential Plant Use at the Engelbert Site, Tioga County,
NY, by Elizabeth Schultz, graduate student at Binghamton University,
SUNY, with paleoethnobotanical study by Nancy Asch Sidell
“Investigating Plant Distributions at a Multi-Component Occupation and
Burial Site in South Central New York” by Elizabeth Schultz (Paper
presented at the 2005 Society for American Archaeology’s Annual Meeting,
in Salt Lake City, Utah)

“Abstract: Archaeologists at Binghamton University have recently examined
macrobotanical remains from the Engelbert site, a Late Woodland and
protohistoric occupation and burial site in south central New York, with the
intention of investigating whether certain plants were deposited more
frequently in burial versus non-burial contexts. Preliminary results indicate
that a variety of plants (maize, beans, hackberry, nut, Chenopodium, Rubus)
were used by the occupants, and that certain plants, such as Rubus, may have
been more frequently deposited in burials. Examining such synchronic or
diachronic differences in plant distributions can further our understanding of
belief and subsistence systems in prehistoric New York” (Schultz 2005).