Temporal change in traditional knowledge and use of wild plants in Artas, Palestine

ABSTRACT Traditional communities have wide knowledge and experience of wild plants as natural resources that have historically been important for food, medicine, spiritual and hygienic uses. These communities have over generations developed knowledge, skills, beliefs and practices related to the natural environment that they are a part of. This type of knowledge is defined as Traditional Ecological Knowledge and is critical in the understanding of cultural heritage. Palestine encompasses a unique cultural heritage regarding wild plant use. The village of Artas, south of Bethlehem, has been researched by ethnobotanists and anthropologists as early as the 1930s, where studies illustrate the profound rooted connection Palestinian villagers held with their natural surroundings, and how social coherence around the outdoor life was entrenched in the local culture. The results of this study indicate that foraging wild plants was traditionally a social activity, and the villagers attach a lot of meaning to these plants due to their medicinal and nutritional value, but also as a part of their surrounding environment around which their lives revolved. The Israeli occupation since 1967 progressively caused a shift from a centuries-old common-pool resource to a restricted area, which eliminated the access to ancestral land and will possibly diminish future levels of Traditional Ecological Knowledge.