International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany


The International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany is an international archaeological conference for archaeobotanists. The conference focuses on the study of plant macrofossils in order to reconstruct past subsistence, trade, construction, ritual, and the environment.

Origins

The first meeting in 1968 consisted of 11 people and took place at Kačina, near Prague. The meeting was termed the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Paläoethnobotanik. The second meeting took place in Budapest in 1971. The IWGP was partly founded in order to enable the compilation of archaeobotanical data.

Organisation

The IWGP takes place triennially. Papers from the conference were initially published in book form, including Plants and Ancient Man in 1984 and Old World Palaeoethnobotany in 1991. In 1992 the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany was founded and became the location for publication of papers emanating from the IWGP. The conference is usually organized as geographical or methodological themed sessions. Recent conferences have occurred at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle Paris in 2016, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2013, and Wilhelmshaven in 2010. The IWGP is overseen a by an international committee of archaeobotanists, including Naomi Miller, Amy Bogaard, and Klaus Oeggl.

Journal

The IWGP publishes the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany with Springer. The current editor in chief is Felix Bittman.