Date: Friday, November 6, 2015 - 16:15
Location: Herbertson Room, School of
Geography and the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY
The biocultural objects and associated information collected by Richard Spruce
in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1850s constitute a unique point of reference for
the useful plants, ethnobotany, anthropology and environmental history of the
region. This priceless collection, housed at RBG Kew and the British Museum,
incorporates indigenous plant-based artefacts, samples of useful plant products,
detailed archival notes on the use of plants by inhabitants of the Amazon, and
accompanying herbarium voucher collections. These form part a larger body of
19th century material held in European collections, much of which has been
poorly researched and is unavailable within Brazil. Such collections have huge
potential as data for studies of Amazonian vegetation and ethnobotanical
knowledge over the last 200 years, and provide a basis for analysis for future
studies being conducted in Brazil.
The talk will explore the nature and
context of these objects and data in the context of Richard Spruce's remarkable
explorations, and outline an emerging initiative to research, document and
evaluate their value and significance in the context of past, present and future
relationships between people and the Amazon forest.
Dr William Milliken
is a Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His experience in the
Brazilian Amazon, including ethnobotanical research with indigenous peoples and
botanical exploration of remote areas, stretches back almost three decades. He
is the author of several books on these subjects.
For more information see here.
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