Discovering Aboriginal Plant Use. Journeys of an Australian Anthropologist. 2014. illus. 192 p. 4to. Hardcover.

Ethnobotany is a diverse field that is concerned with investigating the relationships between human cultures and the flora. In the past, it was mainly used by European scholars who studied the societies of hunter-gatherers and non-Western horticulturalists; today it is increasingly being used to document aspects of the lives of Indigenous peoples existing in a postcolonial world.

The author argues that we can better understand a people if we know how they see and use plants.

In this book, Clarke dips into his field journals to provide a rich account of journeys - as both an anthropologist and an ethnobotanist - that span the temperate, arid, and tropical zones of Australia and neighboring landmasses. Clarke describes the cultural and natural heritage of each region, examining the distinctiveness of the plant life used by Australia's Aboriginal people.