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Poster Short Abstract

The Floral Traces, Beastly Places project invites citizen scientists to record and map wild bluebells and other ancient woodland indicators in Belgium’s Sonian Forest, using plants as archaeological witnesses to bridge the divide between nature and heritage, humans and non-humans.

Poster Abstract

The Floral Traces, Beastly Places project invites citizen scientists to help tell the multispecies stories that lie hidden in the Sonian Forest (Belgium). Beneath the trees, wild bluebells bloom briefly each spring – floral traces that mark the ghostly outlines of old pastures and forgotten animal presences. These plants are more than just flowers: they are feral archives, living witnesses that remember the infrastructures of grazing and dwelling that once shaped this forest. Landscape biographies often tell human-centred stories, keeping non-humans to the periphery of archaeological narratives of landscape. Yet forests, especially those at the edges of cities, are woven from the shared labours of people, animals, and plants. By involving volunteers in data collection during the brief bluebell flowering season, the project builds connections between scientific, ecological, and local communities. Through this collaboration, citizens become active participants in re-membering the forest’s layered pasts. The data gathered will be compared with historical maps and archival sources, tracing how past grazing regimes still whisper through today’s forest floor. In this way, Floral Traces, Beastly Places explores how citizen science can extend archaeological practice – by listening not only to what lies buried (the core of most archaeological inquiries), but also to what still grows, blooms, and remembers in the living landscape.