Plant Domestication and Folk-Biological Change: The Upper Piman/Devil's Claw Example

Ethnologists have the opportunity to document the dynamics of domestication, particularly the cognitive aspects of that process, which archeologists are unable to reconstruct. In this article we show how the recent intensification of cultivation, accompanied by genetic alteration, of a basketry fiber plant, Proboscidea parviflora subspecies parviflora, among the O'odham (Pima) has been accompanied by shifts in the structure of O'odham folk taxonomy. The emic focus on specific plant characteristics, codified in this changing lexicon, may guide cultural selection and encourage isolation of incipient domesticates from their wild progenitors.