Excavations at Mike Taylor's Midden: A Summary Report and Implications for a Re-Characterisation of Megamiddens

Abstract

Despite considerable interest over the past twenty years, observations on the archaeology of the large shell midden known as Mike Taylor's Midden (MTM), near Eland's Bay on the South African west coast, have remained largely unpublished. This paper summarises excavations at MTM from the 1970s to the 1990s, and discusses interpretations of this and other large shell middens which appeared on the west coast between about 3000 and 2000 BP. It is argued that MTM displays much greater variability through time and space than previously suggested, and that large amounts of stone artefacts and bone remained 'invisible' to archaeologists because of the enormous quantities of marine shell refuse. Rather than functioning simply as a processing station for large quantities of black mussels, as previously suggested, MTM was also a camp site where stone knapping and animal food processing occurred. *Received August 1996, revised March 1997