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Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy)
BACKGROUND: Ethnobotanical studies generally describe the traditional knowledge of a territory according to a "hic et nunc" principle. The need of approaching this field also embedding historical data has been frequently acknowledged. With their long history of civilization some regions of...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2009
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656484/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19228384 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-5-7 |
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author | De Natale, Antonino Pezzatti, Gianni Boris Pollio, Antonino |
author_facet | De Natale, Antonino Pezzatti, Gianni Boris Pollio, Antonino |
author_sort | De Natale, Antonino |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Ethnobotanical studies generally describe the traditional knowledge of a territory according to a "hic et nunc" principle. The need of approaching this field also embedding historical data has been frequently acknowledged. With their long history of civilization some regions of the Mediterranean basin seem to be particularly suited for an historical approach to be adopted. Campania, a region of southern Italy, has been selected for a database implementation containing present and past information on plant uses. METHODS: A relational database has been built on the basis of information gathered from different historical sources, including diaries, travel accounts, and treatises on medicinal plants, written by explorers, botanists, physicians, who travelled in Campania during the last three centuries. Moreover, ethnobotanical uses described in historical herbal collections and in Ancient and Medieval texts from the Mediterranean Region have been included in the database. RESULTS: 1672 different uses, ranging from medicinal, to alimentary, ceremonial, veterinary, have been recorded for 474 species listed in the data base. Information is not uniformly spread over the Campanian territory; Sannio being the most studied geographical area and Cilento the least one. About 50 plants have been continuously used in the last three centuries in the cure of the same affections. A comparison with the uses reported for the same species in Ancient treatises shows that the origin of present ethnomedicine from old learned medical doctrines needs a case-by-case confirmation. CONCLUSION: The database is flexible enough to represent a useful tool for researchers who need to store and compare present and previous ethnobotanical uses from Mediterranean Countries. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2656484 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-26564842009-03-17 Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) De Natale, Antonino Pezzatti, Gianni Boris Pollio, Antonino J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research BACKGROUND: Ethnobotanical studies generally describe the traditional knowledge of a territory according to a "hic et nunc" principle. The need of approaching this field also embedding historical data has been frequently acknowledged. With their long history of civilization some regions of the Mediterranean basin seem to be particularly suited for an historical approach to be adopted. Campania, a region of southern Italy, has been selected for a database implementation containing present and past information on plant uses. METHODS: A relational database has been built on the basis of information gathered from different historical sources, including diaries, travel accounts, and treatises on medicinal plants, written by explorers, botanists, physicians, who travelled in Campania during the last three centuries. Moreover, ethnobotanical uses described in historical herbal collections and in Ancient and Medieval texts from the Mediterranean Region have been included in the database. RESULTS: 1672 different uses, ranging from medicinal, to alimentary, ceremonial, veterinary, have been recorded for 474 species listed in the data base. Information is not uniformly spread over the Campanian territory; Sannio being the most studied geographical area and Cilento the least one. About 50 plants have been continuously used in the last three centuries in the cure of the same affections. A comparison with the uses reported for the same species in Ancient treatises shows that the origin of present ethnomedicine from old learned medical doctrines needs a case-by-case confirmation. CONCLUSION: The database is flexible enough to represent a useful tool for researchers who need to store and compare present and previous ethnobotanical uses from Mediterranean Countries. BioMed Central 2009-02-19 /pmc/articles/PMC2656484/ /pubmed/19228384 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-5-7 Text en Copyright © 2009 De Natale et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research De Natale, Antonino Pezzatti, Gianni Boris Pollio, Antonino Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) |
title | Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) |
title_full | Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) |
title_fullStr | Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) |
title_full_unstemmed | Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) |
title_short | Extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the Campania region (southern Italy) |
title_sort | extending the temporal context of ethnobotanical databases: the case study of the campania region (southern italy) |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656484/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19228384 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-5-7 |
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