Paleoenvironmental reconstruction is an important contribution of phytolith analysis (the study of plant opal silica bodies) to archaeology and paleoecology.  Phytoliths extracted from natural soil accumulations provide a detailed record of vegetation, and the impact on that vegetation by human activities such as clearance for agriculture.

Successful tapping of the wealth of information from phytolith analysis for the study of past vegetation depends on two things: (1) establishing diagnostic types for key indicator species, and (2) developing phytolith vegetation analogs, or signatures, for modern plant communities.

The goal of this project is to establish diagnostic phytolith types and vegetation signatures for the flora of Ecuador, specifically, for plant communities along two idealized transects that sample a significant part of Ecuador's floral diversity: (1) coastal to Amazon, encompassing the outer coastal plain, inner coastal plain, western slopes, interandean zone, eastern slopes, and eastern lowlands, between approximately 1 degree north and 1 degree south latitude, and (2) coastal plain, encompassing the north to south shift from evergreen forest to open woodland/steppe from 1 degree north to 4 degrees south latitude, at approximately 80 degrees longitude (see map below).

Dr. Robin Kennedy, Director of the University of Missouri Herbarium, produced the list of vegetative dominance in the study transects shown in the map below.  The specimens studied were provided in part by the Missouri Botanical Garden (MO) and the University of Missouri Herbarium (UMO).

For more information about this project, or other research activities of the MU Paleoethnobotany Lab, contact Deborah Pearsall.