Description
Author: Jan Timbrook (with botanical watercolors by Chris Chapman)
Publisher: Polyverse Publishing for Santa Barbara Museum off Natural History (2023)
Paperback: 271 pages
From islands off the shore of Santa Barbara to the chaparral-covered mountains of the dry inland regions, the land of the Chumash is a storehouse of plants, an area of great biological richness and variety. Living intimately within this land for more than nine thousand years, the Chumash developed an intense and sophisticated relationship with the plants around them. They collected and processed nuts, seeds, berries, roots, leaves, twigs, shoots, and wood from which they created practically everything they needed to live, from medicines to weapons to decorative items.
Covering both historic and contemporary use of plants, this book – the result of three decades of research in archives and among native people – celebrates more than just the variety of plants; it celebrates the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the people who have always known them best.
About the Author: Jan Timbrook, an anthropologist and ethnobiologist who specializes in the indigenous Chumash people of the Santa Barbara region — particularly their uses of plants in food, medicine, and basketry — is Curator Emeritus at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History after 45 years on the Anthropology staff.
