Christine Hastorf, the laboratory director has been completing palaeoethnobotanical work since 1980, primarily in the Andean region of South America. This current laboratory was initiated in 1994 when she moved to UC Berkeley. Mainly focusing on macro remains, she has interests in morphology, sampling, collection methods, identification, quantification, interpretation. She has increased the lab’s comparative plant samples to over 5000 specimens from South America, western North America, American South West, Mesoamerica and the Near East, with special maize, tuber, wood, fiber and dung collections.
Currently she is working on Chenopodium and Capsicum morphology, evidence for agricultural intensification, plants used for house construction, and writing up the Taraco Archaeological Project excavations.
