Event: Prospects for Paleoethnobotany in the Canadian West
4 February 2025
Tuesday, February 4th 2025
In-person, 1:00 pm, Tory 14-28
Please join the IPIA in welcoming Dr. Natasha Lyons to campus for her talk "Prospects for Palaeoethnobotany in the Canadian West".
Paleoethnobotany, also known as archaeobotany, is the study of ancient plant remains, and can tell us about the plant foods, medicines, technologies, and landscape management systems used by ancestral peoples. In this talk, Dr. Lyons will explore some of the successes and challenges of, and prospects for, palaeoethnobotany in Western Canada. Case studies from throughout this region will be used to illustrate how palaeoethnobotanical sampling and analysis can be effectively applied to different preservation contexts and scales of inquiry in both academic and compliance settings.
Natasha Lyons, PhD, is a founding partner of Ursus Heritage Consulting and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Lyons has 25 years of professional experience as a community-based archaeologist and enjoys longstanding research partnerships with several Indigenous Nations in Western Canada. In 2009, she initiated the Inuvialuit Living History Project with the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, and has co-directed it since 2015 with Lisa Hodgetts. Dr. Lyons co-publishes widely on ethical and heart-centred research practice, community heritage, human-plant relationships, and the digital humanities: