The 45th Annual Conference of the Society of Ethnobiology in St. Louis, MO, Apr 24–27, 2024

Data scientists extract useful knowledge from a deluge of data, and they develop new tools to manage this task daily. These tools frequently rely on a programming language. Unfortunately, learning a programming language can be daunting for both new and experienced researchers. It relies on detailed knowledge of new software, grammatical and syntactical conventions, along with new data organization practices. It is easy to get lost in the sea of information on each of these topics. Fortunately, a popular new suite of tools has emerged within R called the tidyverse. Packages within the tidyverse share a similar design philosophy and data structure, which allows for the communication of complex statistical processes with only a handful of core functions. A common way to integrate data manipulation, visualization, and modeling with the tidyverse has led to an explosion of new R users. This workshop will introduce attendees to basic computer processes and file structures, useful core tidyverse packages called dplyr and ggplot2, and a new package for modeling called tidymodels. Integrating R and the tidyverse into research projects enhances reproducibility, supports long-term project management, and allows users to access up-to-the-minute statistical tools free of charge. Participants must bring a laptop with R and RStudio downloaded and will be provided lunch (select your lunch order HERE). The deadline to place your lunch order for this workshop is Friday April 12, 2024. You may still register after this date, as long as there is space, but we will not be able to provide lunch for late registrants.

Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand use the concept of Kaitiakitanga to articulate Māori cultural stewardship. Kaitiakitanga express long-held responsibilities of Māori to nature, which are detailed in narratives of lineage, connection to place and the expression of cultural practices. Kaitiakitanga is now widely utilized in New Zealand as a framework for the protection of nature and provides a foundation for indigenous inclusion in environmental resource issues. Efforts to maintain this practice and the connection to nature are now a focus of Māori communities, particularly within urban areas where biodiversity is declining and urban expansion is increasing. This dilemma of Māori and the practice of kaitiakitanga prompts a need to understand how wider indigenous practices of environmental stewardship exist in urban areas, what challenges might arise in the expression of these practices and knowledge and importantly, how support for these practices can grow amongst urban indigenous and non-indigenous folk.    

This workshop on urban indigenous stewardship will enable participants to identify their local communities/indigenous groups in and in proximity to urban areas, what challenges may be present for indigenous stewardship and how they might work to support and encourage stewardship in urban spaces. The workshop will give participants the opportunity to hear from other like-minded people and share knowledge together that may benefit the growth of cultural stewardship of nature in urban areas.

Ethnographic fieldwork in recent decades has vastly expanded our knowledge of the dizzyingly varied forms of Mesoamerican cacao beverages. At last year’s conference workshop on Mexican condiments, Richard Tan and Maite Lascurain presented a range of flowers including Bourreria huanita and the famous ear-flower Cymbopetalum penduliflorum added to traditional cacao beverages for specific aromas or flavors. This year we focus on diverse cacao foaming agents, i.e. saponin- or latex-rich plant additives from species of Smilax, Gonolobus, Marsdenia, that contribute apparently nothing in olfactory or gustatory terms, but which when frothed, bind with specific surfactants in cacao to create a stable colloidal suspension. The result ranges from a rich head of bubbles to a bowl of pure foam, a luxurious, ethereal comestible, light and insubstantial as air. Physico-chemical properties and mechanisms of these foams are inadequately understood and there is a confusing diversity of recipes and practices. Mazatec, Chinantec, Zapotec and other Mesoamerican names might have Proto-Mixe-Zoque origins; but they also resonate with one lexeme in Nahuatl “popo'' which refers to blurring, bubbling, aeration, smoke and other amorphous states. Otherwise, these foams don’t seem to be classified as a group nor encoded in any other indigenous cognitive or lexical categories. This puts stumbling blocks in efforts to construct an overarching ethnobotanical theory to explain these items, which are unique and without equivalent among world food cultures.

This workshop is designed as a series of experiments to puzzle out the mysteries of the human knowledge and human knowhow involving plants that cause foam. We review 16th century references to different cacao beverages in the Florentine Codex or as described by Dr. Francisco Hernandez. We establish the ethnography and geography of these foamed drinks in diverse living indigenous cultures. We conduct hands-on demonstrations of historically-attested methods for producing foam, including pouring from a height, to see if they really work. We explain the step-by-step process of recreating the celebrated bu’pu of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is flavored and foamed with Plumeria rubra flowers, and taste our work afterwards. Depending on ingredient availability, we also hope to deconstruct one complex cacao beverage, perhaps the tejate of Oaxaca, foaming each component of the recipe, including pixtle (Pouteria sapota), the flowers of Quararibea funebris, the processed seeds of pataxte (Theobroma bicolor), individually and then together, to try to understand the biotechnology involved, and explain what happens and why. Come formulate your own wild theories and join in the speculative fun!