Under the Shade of Thipaak: The Ethnoecology of Cycads in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean

Society for Ethnobotany Daniel F. Austin Award

The important cultural role of an ancient, endangered
plant

Under
the Shade of Thipaak
is the first book to explore the cultural role of cycads, plants that evolved
over 250 million years ago and are now critically endangered, in the ancient
and modern Mesoamerican and Caribbean worlds. This volume demonstrates how
these ancient plants have figured prominently in regional mythologies, rituals,
art, and foodways from the Pleistocene-Holocene
transition to the present.

Contributors discuss the
importance of cycads from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including
biology and population genetics, historical ecology, archaeology, art history,
linguistics, and conservation and sustainability. Chapters pay special
attention to the enduring conceptual relationships between cycads and maize.
This book demonstrates how a close examination of cycad-human relationships can
motivate conservation of these threatened plants in ways that engage local
communities, as well as promote the significance of ancient and modern
practices that unite nature and culture.
Contributors: Francisco Barona-Gómez Emanuel Bojorquez Quintal Mark A. Bonta Edder Daniel Bustos-Díaz Dánae Cabrera-Toledo Michael Calonje Michael D. Carrasco Angélica Cibrián-Jaramillo Joshua D. Englehardt Jorge González-Astorga Naishla M. Gutiérrez-Arroyo José Saíd Gutiérrez-Ortega Thomas Hart Jaime R. Pagán-Jiménez Francisco Pérez-Zavala Luis Rojas Abarca Esteban Sánchez Rodríguez Dennis William Stevenson Amber M. VanDerwarker Luis R. Velázquez Maldonado Andrew P. Vovides