Deborah M. Pearsall , Professor Emerita, University of Missouri, USA Department of Anthropology. Recently retired from MU after 35 years, Debby Pearsall holds a BA from the University of Michigan and MA and PhD from the University of Illinois, all degrees in anthropology. Her interests within this discipline center on South American archaeology and paleoethnobotany--the study of people-plant interrelationships through ... Read morethe archaeological record. She has conducted paleoethnobotanical research in numerous locations in the Americas. Her research has two broad themes: the origins and spread of agriculture in the lowland Neotropics, and methods and approaches in paleoethnobotany. She is the author of three books, Paleoethnobotany. A Handbook of Procedures ; Plants and People in Ancient Ecuador: The Ethnobotany of the Jama River Valley; and Piperno and Pearsall , The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics , and was the general editor of Academic Press's 2008 Encyclopedia of Archaeology . She has published in numerous professional journals and edited books. Show Less