Welcome to the website of the Paleoethnobotany Laboratory at Brown (PEBLab)!
Our mission is to connect scholars, students, researchers, and the public with research activities of the PEBLab. On this website we highlight projects and publications, facilities and equipment, and affiliated researchers and students.
Our research at the PEBLab focuses on foodways and ethnoecology. Research teams draw botanical residues from artifacts, teeth, and sediments to understand human-plant relationships in the historic and ancient past. Paleoethnobotanical research enables us to pose new questions about human adaptations to climate shifts and human impacts on local environments over time. We can also illuminate culinary practices and gastronomic traditions, using paleoethnobotanical methods to extract and analyze food residues.
The PEBLab was created in 2023 to facilitate research using paleoethnobotanical methods, including macrobotanical (carpological and anthracological) and microbotanical (phytolith and starch grain) analyses. Researchers with our group include faculty and students from the Department of Anthropology and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World (JIAAW).
Our activities unfold in two physical locations on the Brown University Campus:
- Wet Laboratory: Integrated Laboratory for Archaeological Sciences (ILAS), located in the Medical Research Laboratory (MRL) building, Rm 407, at 89 Waterman St.
- Dry Laboratory: located in Giddings House, Rm 202, at 128 Hope St.