Bringing the Past to Life
 Ksenija Borojevic: Investigating Ancient People and Plants
Archaeologist Ksenija Borojevic began her research at an early age. When she was ten she constructed a museum of “old things” for her mother’s 40th birthday—complete with an exhibition guide, a guest book, and an entrance fee. Her mother may have appreciated the gift, but her parents, both plant geneticists, were not thrilled with her ultimate career choice. They wondered why she wanted to look at the past instead of the future, and of course they worried that she would never find a job. But Borojevic persevered and in 2005 she joined the archaeology faculty at Boston University. She did follow in her parents’ footsteps in one regard—her research focuses on paleoethnobotany, the study of how ancient people used plants.
 “Archaeologists often look at the pots and forget to think about what’s inside of them,” she says. “But by studying plant remains we can learn about the local environment, what season of the year people lived at a site, what they ate, how they farmed, and what kind of medicinal plants they used.” Borojevic collects plant remains by pouring samples collected during excavation into specially designed “flotation tanks” that allow sediment to sink to the bottom while the lighter seeds rise to the top. Once collected, she identifies each seed under a microscope.
 Much of her research focuses on the village of Opovo, Serbia, that was occupied during the Late Neolithic period, from 4700 to 4500 bce, when Europeans first learned to farm domesticated plants. While paleoethnobotanists often focus on major food sources, principally wheat and other grains, Borojevic looks at all of the remains from a site. While she found domestic wheat and barley at Opovo, she also found that the villagers used many wild plants, including water chestnuts. Archaeologists had thought that once people began to farm, domesticated grains became their major food, but Borojevic’s research demonstrates that early farmers at Opovo continued to eat a wide variety of foods gathered from the wild.
As the principal archaeobotanist at another site, Tel Megiddo in Israel, Borojevic studies plant remains from a city that was an important crossroads of the ancient world. She is also involved in studying plant remains at Tel Kedesh, a Hellenistic period site (ca. 2nd century bce) in the Upper Galilee of modern Israel, and at other archaeological sites in southeastern Europe.
For more information, see www.bu.edu/archaeology/faculty/Borojevic.htm.
— by Trina Arpin |
