This project, supported by the Leverhulme Trust, is allowing completion of work that has preoccupied Roy Ellen for over 50 years of anthropological research and fieldwork among the Nuaulu people of Seram, eastern Indonesia.
The project enhances this work through publication of a 300 page monograph (including data appendices) entitled ‘The Nuaulu world of plants: ethnobotanical cognition, knowledge and practice among a people of Seram, eastern Indonesia’, focusing on vascular species.
The book reviews the current consensus regarding folk classification, particularly the relationship between so-called ‘natural’ (general-purpose) classifications and use-based (special-purpose) schemes, and the social distribution of knowledge in relation to sharing and specialisation, placing emphasis on issues relating to knowledge erosion and the incorporation of new knowledge, that have particularly concerned Ellen in recent years.