Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Baram, Uzi

Area of Concentration

Anthropology

Abstract

This thesis proposes a framework for reciprocal dendrochronology, a decolonial approach to tree-ring science that shifts the role of the researcher from an extractive observer to a vessel for translating arboreal memory, and explores how trees function as chronotopes: material intersections where time and space are fused into a living record (Bakhtin 1981). By applying the structuralist frameworks of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1955) and Joseph Campbell (1949), it is argued that trees have long functioned as universal symbols of continuity and the axis of existence. This baseline is then brought into conversation with the chronotopic theory of Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) and the landscape anthropology of Keith Basso (1996) to redefine the tree trunk as an active recorder of both climate and history. Drawing on Marcel Mauss’s (1925) theory of the gift and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (2013) Indigenous-informed ethics of reciprocity, the study argues that dendrochronological sampling creates debt: an obligation to return a tree’s history to the community with care. The application of reciprocal dendrochronology utilizes an experimental Autoregressive (AR) Monte Carlo simulation to validate the cross-dated placements determined through dplR (Bunn 2008) and visual cross-dating. The resulting South Florida slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. densa) chronology (1822-2025) reframes noise present in subtropical dendrochronology as a record of coastal survival. This work, in all, transforms measurement and analysis into a collaborative act of remembering. It argues that merging empirical observation with the ethical obligation of reciprocating a gift fosters a broader practice of daily reciprocity, and serves as an invitation to move beyond the laboratory to actively inhabit a shared and precarious future alongside the land.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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