Botany:

About 25 years ago, I directed survey crews over a 6-square mile area known
to the California Bureau of Land Management as Table Mountain. There are 208
recorded prehistoric sites out there, which span the past 1500 years. There
are also historic mines, camps, and dumps. But, one of my research issues
involved recovery of plant specimens, pressing them, identification, and
testing to see if some of the plants were artificially brought into the area
by prehistoric people for horticulture. We documented several varieties of
nightshade in rockshelters, which admittedly could have been dropped from
medicine bags. The best evidence were patches of Opuntia cactus planted at
elevations 1000 feet higher than normal. These were directly in the center of
the prehistoric camps. They exist in protohistoric camps too. Thus, I believe
Opuntia is another example of archaeobotany.

Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.