Abstract
During the past decade, over 3000 shell middens or shell matrix deposits have been discovered on the Farasan Islands in the southern Red Sea, dating to the period c. 7,360 to 4,700 years ago. Many of the sites are distributed along a palaeoshoreline which is now 2–3 m above present sea level. Others form clusters with some sites on the shoreline and others located inland over distances of c. 30 m to 1 km. We refer to these inland sites as ‘post-shore’ sites. Following Meehan, who observed a similar spatial separation in shell deposition in her ethnographic study of Anbarra shellgathering in the Northern Territory of Australia, we hypothesise that the shoreline sites are specialised sites for the processing or immediate consumption of shell food, and the post-shore sites are habitation sites used for a variety of activities. We test this proposition through a systematic analysis of 55 radiocarbon dates and measurement of shell quantities from the excavation of 15 shell matrix sites in a variety of locations including shoreline and post-shore sites. Our results demonstrate large differences in rates of shell accumulation between these two types of sites and selective removal of shoreline sites by changes in sea level. We also discuss the wider implications for understanding the differential preservation and visibility of shell-matrix deposits in coastal settings in other parts of the world extending back into the later Pleistocene in association with periods of lowersea level. Our results highlight the importance of taphonomic factors of post-depositional degradation and destruction, rates of shell accumulation, the influence on site location of factors other than shell food supply, and the relative distance of deposits from their nearest palaeoshorelines as key variables in the interpretation of shell quantities. Failure to take these variables into account when investigating shells and shell-matrix deposits in late Pleistocene and early Holocene contexts is likely to compromise interpretations of the role and significance of shell food in human evolutionary and socio-cultural development.
Highlights
Clusters of Holocene shell middens that include post-shore/habitational sites have been reported in other parts of the world [19,72,73,74], in some cases in clear association with changes of sea level or shoreline development, and we suggest that these would repay further investigation in the light of the results from the Farasan
The highest rates of shell accumulation occur in the largest mounds and show that in some cases substantial deposits accumulated within a matter of decades
The highest rates of accumulation and the largest deposits occur on the shoreline, while the volume of shell material in post-shore deposits is generally much smaller and the rate of shell accumulation lower by an order of magnitude than in the shoreline sites
Summary
The large quantities of shells resulting from shell food consumption, their relative durability and resistance to decay, and their tendency to form substantial mounds of high archaeological visibility have all encouraged a long history and variety of studies devoted to such issues as chronology, site function, palaeodiet, palaeoeconomy, and the long-term history of coastal adaptations and their evolutionary consequences, with an extensive literature on the appropriateness and accuracy of quantitative measures such as the volume of shell-matrix deposits, numbers of shells collected, shell-to-meat-weight ratios, and comparisons with other food remains [4,17,18,19,20,21,22,23] This is true both for mid to late Holocene periods, which are well known for the ubiquity of their shell matrix sites, as well as for early Holocene and late Pleistocene periods, where coastal evidence is much more elusive, as sea level change would have submerged most coastlines for much of this period [24,25,26]
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