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Poppies and Women Under the Linden Tree in a Slovak Village: Exploring Culturally Significant Plants Through Informed Archaeological Storytelling

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  • Zuzana Chovanec
Zuzana Chovanec
University at Albany
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63845494909726

Published 2024-05-21

Keywords

  • storytelling,
  • linden tree,
  • archaeology,
  • Slovak,
  • plants,
  • poppies
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Chovanec, Zuzana. 2024. “Poppies and Women Under the Linden Tree in a Slovak Village: Exploring Culturally Significant Plants Through Informed Archaeological Storytelling”. Plant Perspectives, May. https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63845494909726.

Copyright (c) 2024 Zuzana Chovanec

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

In her 1993 book, ‘What This Awl Means’, Jane Spector examined the relationship between gender, objects, environment and archaeology through a female personal narrative. While such historical storytelling has been viewed as unconventional, it is effective as it paints a vibrant picture communicating context, significance and insight into what might otherwise be viewed in traditional archaeological description as a simple, utilitarian tool. However, to do this effectively, sufficient cultural competence and symbolic understanding must be woven with archaeological research, anthropological interpretation and understanding of the cultural and historical context through the lens of storytelling. This paper explores this approach by presenting the complex symbolic and agroeconomic relationships maintained with the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) and the linden tree (Tilia sp.) by ancient peoples in Central Europe. The story draws on a body of archaeological, botanical and chemical research, Slovak cultural and linguistic background, as well as ancestral oral history.

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