Unit 5: Plants for Technology

This is a modern smokehouse made of white spruce bark. It stands at the Rachel Reindeer Cultural Camp in the Mackenzie Delta near Inuvik. The Gwich’in used to use white spruce bark to roof and wall smokehouses and summer shelters. The girdled trees were later used for firewood. Photograph by Leslie Main Johnson (1999).

In most environments, people manufacture the majority of their tools, implements, art, housing, and clothing from plants. In this unit, we take a broad overview of plant materials used in traditional societies, and how the physical and chemical properties of plants contribute to their usefulness. What plants are used in technology depends on interaction between environment (nature and availability of different kinds of plants, climate) and way of life (what kinds of implements are needed, mobility, permanence of settlements, mode of subsistence, other aspects of culture, and world view). Many parts of plants can be used to make useful artifacts, from the seed fluff of cattails or cotton, to leaves, stem fibres, wood, bark, or long flexible branches called “withes.” Fruits and seeds may be used for beads, or to make pigments. Resins and gums may provide waterproofing, adhesives, or the base of paints and pigments. The different chemical and physical properties of plants make them more or less suitable for different uses. Their availability will also determine which plants will be used to meet the material needs of any given group of people.

Objectives

By the end of this unit you should be able to

1. discuss different uses of plants in meeting the daily material needs of people.
2. explain the importance of plants in material culture for different cultural groups, and give examples.
3. identify factors that influence the degree of elaboration of material culture, and explain the choices of plant materials made by different cultural groups.