This chapter provides final thoughts and key takeaways from the book. It reminds you of what you have learned throughout this book – the problems – as well as encourages you to remain hopeful by taking action – through each recipe. This chapter asks you to review your past choices and behaviors in light of everything you learned from reading this book, and have a plan of action to make a difference, starting today, because you absolutely can do it. I know you can.

This chapter highlights the good that is happening around the world to give animal orphans a second chance, to prevent poaching, to protect the environment, to rehabilitate animals in need and give them a sanctuary if they cannot be released to the wild, and is an all-around feel-good chapter. This chapter provides many examples of organizations who "do good" as well as case studies describing how to replace environmentally detrimental livelihoods with livelihoods that focus on conservation, ecotourism, and positive wildlife experiences. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how humans can benefit multiple species, their habitats, and local economies simultaneously in an effort to provide long-term and stable economic and social benefits for all individuals involved (human and non-human).

This chapter emphasizes understanding and appreciation of “woody plants” – trees, shrubs, subshrubs, and more – as biological organisms, environmental lifeforms. The central point being that such an understanding bears directly on any interpretation of archaeological wood. The details provided concerning the basic morphological features and gross anatomical characteristics of woody plants serve in part also as a prelude to more in-depth discussion of wood structural and anatomical traits and variation in later chapters. Woody plants grow, rest, mature, age, flower, bear fruit, interact with neighbors, react to environmental circumstances, and respond to signals from a host of external influences. Wood, technically secondary xylem, serves major roles as part of an integrated, dynamic system of tissues that together are integral to plant physiology, health, and longevity. Trees express juvenile, mature, and senescent stages of wood development; “reaction” wood forms mainly in response to gravitational forces and is useful to distinguish branch from stem wood. The details of growth rings and other anatomical traits provide insights into important life-history events and long-term growth circumstances affecting trees. These details in turn may serve as proxy evidence of past forest structure and the bioclimatic conditions to which once living trees responded, with relevance also to human well-being and culture. Archaeological wood is thus a richly textured source of information about the past, relating the lives of ancient trees, potentially also including human influences.

This chapter outlines the main steps in the process of archaeological wood analysis for taxonomic assessment. Preparation of specimens and sampling for anatomical characterization, followed by microscopy and anatomical data collection, then the identification process leading to a taxonomic assignment. Difficulties and problems unique to working with wood in fragmentary, degraded, and/or distorted conditions are examined, including how to deal with these and a variety of related issues. Several new frontiers in wood identification and analysis such as automated systems, DNA methods, high-resolution microscopy, and more are also described. The overall aim is to provide readers and students of the subject with an improved understanding of the potential along with the limitations involved in assigning woods taxonomically, both modern and ancient. A thorough comprehension of wood anatomy and its relationship to biological systematics and taxonomy is essential, necessary both to accuracy of assignment and to valid reporting. This in turn ensures that archaeological results are suitable for incorporation into broader archaeological and paleoecological frameworks, thus made more accessible and widely relevant across historical and scientific disciplines.

This chapter begins by overviewing the history of discoveries and related circumstances involving archaeological wood, with emphasis on developments since the mid-18th-century emergence of archaeology as a scientific discipline. The prominent role of environmental contexts that afford exceptional organic preservation is explicit, with material from perpetually moist, or conversely, quite arid settings having been dominant themes from the beginning. The relevance and variety of archaeological contexts, site formation processes, and the dominant forms of wood preservation (carbonized, waterlogged, desiccated, mineralized), as well as the different classes or categories of wooden remains and objects that may be found archaeologically are explained in detail. Choices, procedures, and issues related to excavation, field sampling, field recovery, and immediate handling of archaeological wood are also described.