Elisabeth Hildebrand
Assistant ProfessorPh.D., Washington University in St. Louis, 2003
Teaching
Courses taught at Stony Brook include Introduction to Ethnobotany, African Peoples and Cultures, Ethnoarchaeology, and Ancient African Civilizations. Elisabeth Hildebrand will also be teaching elements of the Turkana Basin Institute field school in Kenya.
Research Interests
My research concerns the relations between plants and people. Because the beginning of agriculture catalyzed fundamental changes in human subsistence and social organization, I give special emphasis to causes and processes of plant domestication. Among the many regions where domestication occurred, I find Africa an intriguing place to situate such studies. Because African crops and environments differ from those in other, well-studied regions (e.g., Southwest Asia and Mexico), African motives and means for plant domestication may have been unusual in a global context.
My pursuit of these issues involves several different projects and
data sources. My PhD fieldwork used ethnobotanical and
ethnoarchaeological methods to develop models of domestication for
southwest Ethiopian crops. My postdoctoral fieldwork tested these
models via survey and excavation of rockshelters in Kafa, southwest
Ethiopia. Now, as co-director of excavations at Moche Borago
rockshelter in south Ethiopia, I intend to examine long-term
perspectives on pre-agricultural subsistence strategies via an
archaeological sequence that extends into the late Pleistocene.
In addition to these Ethiopian projects, I am studying early plant
food production in Sudan at 8B52A, a large subterranean granary
complex on Sai Island. I am also beginning a project on Holocene
subsistence and society in West Turkana, Kenya.
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