Tacking Between Then and Now; A Richer View of Farming and Feasting in the Andes

Paleoethnobotany has always been strongly supported by ethnography, and modern farming studies gain much from learning of the domestication process as well as the range of past farming strategies.While plant use changes constantly, we can learn much from studying multiple settings.Ancient and modern field systems, feast foods, and trade in foodstuffs open up a deeper view of the ingredients that people valued as well as the strength of tradition and memory within groups.Despite a series of conquests and revolutions, we can still compare the past and the present land use, farming, and feasting to learn of both settings through the other.I will illustrate this dynamic of the past and the present using examples from the Bolivian Altiplano.