Staff
Mollie Toll
Mollie Toll
Director, Ethnobotany Laboratory
505-827-6458
mollie.toll@state.nm.us
B.A., Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1970
M.A., Archaeology, Loyola University, 1975
M.S., Plant Ecology, University of New Mexico, 1977
The engaging parts of archaeology for me have always been the element of discovery, connections between different ways of approaching questions, and communication. I met Vorsila Bohrer while working at Fresnal Shelter in Sacramento Mountains, southeast New Mexico, in 1971. I was enchanted with the option of looking at questions of human subsistence and manufacturing systems through plant remains. So much of the field of ethnobotany is (still) new and uncharted that we frequently end up figuring things out by the seat of our pants. The connections between botany, landscape, climate, and human subsistence choices and limits are enough to keep us well entertained in the Ethnobotany Lab. Increasingly, I find myself interested in communicating all this interesting information to the public, especially when it involves working with teachers and in school classrooms.
With few exceptions, I have worked in the Greater Southwest, from Colorado and Utah to northern Mexico, but with a particular affection for the Colorado Plateau.