Ethnobiology and the Science of Humankind

Roy Ellen is Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. His research, mainly focussed on island southeast Asia, has spanned issues in ethnobiological classification, the ecology of swidden cultivation, deforestation and inter-island trade. His previous publications include On the Edge of the Banda Zone (2003), The Cultural Relations of Classification (1993) and Environment, Subsistence and System (1982).

"Roy Ellen manages to assemble a series of articles, most of the written by internationally renowned scholars, which comprise an astonishing variety of themes and theories." (Anthropos, 2009)"The book's eight chapters succeed admirably in meeting its goal. It provides an eclectic, but reasonably comprehensive overview ... through many thought-provoking examples." (Journal of Anthropological Research)

• Preface vi 1. Introduction 1Roy Ellen 2. Speculations on the First Congress of Ethnozoological Nomenclature 29Brent Berlin 3. Ethnobiology and the Evolution of the Human Mind 55Steven Mithen 4. The Interplay of Ethnographic and Archaeological Knowledge in the Study of Past Human Subsistence 77David Harris5. Amazonian historical ecologies 97Laura Rival 6. The Interface Between Medical Ethnobotany and Medical Anthropology 117Anna Waldstein and Cameron Adams 7. Ethnobiology and Applied Anthropology: rapprochement of the academic with the pratical 147Paul Sillitoe 8. Meeting of Minds: How do we Share our Appreciation of Traditional environmental knowledge? 177Eugene Hunn Index 197