BrieAnna Langlie, PhD
I am the director of LAFF, and a specialist in paleoethnobotany, or the analysis of plant remains recovered from archaeological contexts. Humans have always had an intimate relationship with plants. We use multitudes of plants for an array purposes in our lives. For example, arrangements of flowers are sent to express love. We also use plants for food, drink, ritual, and structural support in architecture. That means, these culturally constructed actions can be studied by proxy in the archaeological record by looking at plant residues. The plants can tell us so many things about how past humans lived, interacted with one another, and how humans transformed their environment.
As the descendent of many generations of farmers in southern Minnesota, I have a personal stake in making sure that food and farming systems are viable for future generations. That picture of a mid-western farm is where my paternal grandmother was born, and where my father currently resides. This background provides much of the motivation for my research on ancient agriculture and food systems. Beyond that, I have a general love for cooking and eating.
Courses Taught
Introduction to the Four Fields of Anthropology
Civilizations of the Ancient Andes
Seminar in the Archaeology of Domestication
Lab Methods in Paleoethnobotany
Seminar in Anthro Writing and Publication
The Scientific Basis of Environmental Issues
About My Research
My primary research is located in the Andes Mountains of South America in a region known as the altiplano. My research is based out of the Collasuyo Archaeological Research Institute (CARI), a non-profit organization and facility located in Puno, Peru. Check CARI out here. In my dissertation research I looked at how terraced fields, cropping schemes, and food systems were tuned to warfare and climate changes for a large fortified community living in the hinterlands near Lake Titicaca between AD 1100 and 1450.
In my new research, called The Altiplano Agriculture and Communities Project, I am looking broadly at how the construction of monumental field systems in the region articulated with oscillating temperatures and social complexity through time. This project involves remote sensing of field systems, archaeological survey, excavations, and ethnobotancial interviews with the communities still farming traditional terrace systems.
I am also involved in ongoing and collaborative research on the biological and cultural processes of domestication of Andean crops such potatoes and quinoa during the Archaic and Formative periods.
You can download my curriculum vitae here. Below is a list of selected publications.
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S. and José Capriles
2021 Paleoethnobotanical Evidence Points to Agricultural Mutualism among Early Camelid Pastoralists of the Andean Central
Altiplano. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. pdf
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S.
2021 Origins of Food Production in the High Andes. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. edited by Mark Aldenderfer.
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S.
2020 Late Intermediate Period Plant Use at a Colla Hillfort, Puno, Peru (AD 1300-1450). Latin American Antiquity. pdf
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S.
2018 Building Ecological Resistance: Late Intermediate Period Farming in the South-Central Highland Andes (CE 1100–
1450). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. pdf
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S.
2018 Morphological Analysis of Late Pre-Hispanic Peruvian Chenopodium spp., Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. pdf
Browman, David L., Gayle J. Fritz, and BRIEANNA S. LANGLIE
2018 Origins of Food-Producing Economies in the Americas. In The Human Past:
World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies 4th edition, edited by Chris Scarre, pp. 303-343. Thames & Hudson, London.
Fritz, Gayle J., Maria C. Bruno, BRIEANNA S. LANGLIE, Bruce Smith, and Logan Kistler 2017 Cultigen Chenopods in the Americas: A Hemispherical Perspective. In Social Perspectives on Ancient Lives from
Paleoethnobotanical Data, edited by Matthew P. Sayre, and Maria C. Bruno, pp. 55-76. Springer, New York. pdf
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S., and Elizabeth N. Arkush
2016 Managing Mayhem: Conflict, Environment, and Subsistence in the Andean Late Intermediate Period, Puno, Peru. In The
Archaeology of Warfare and Food: Food Insecurity in Prehistory, edited by Amber VanDerwarker and Greg Wilson, pp. 259-
290. Springer, New York. pdf
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S., Natalie G. Mueller, Robert N. Spengler, and Gayle J. Fritz
2014 Agricultural Origins from the Ground Up: Archaeological Perspectives on Plant Domestication. American Journal of Botany
101:1601-1617. pdf
LANGLIE, BRIEANNA S., Christine A. Hastorf, Maria C. Bruno, Marc Bermann, Renée Bonzani, and William Castellón Condarco
2011 Diversity in Andean Chenopodium Domestication: Describing a New Morphological Type from La Barca, Bolivia 1300-1250 BC (Department of Oruro), Journal of Ethnobiology 31(1):72-78. pdf
Publications
