The Dead Must be Fed: Symbolic Meanings of the Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Area

Abstract

Long viewed as ‘kitchen middens’, the shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Area have -provided archaeologists of coastal California insight into the subsistence and ecology of precontact native groups. In this article, the authors develop a framework for understanding the cultural significance of these shellmounds which regards them as intentional cultural features, incorporates social context, and builds on earlier subsistence-focused studies of the shellmounds in order to better appreciate the meaning of the numerous human remains interred therein. A structural analysis is then used to show that the concepts of food and ancestors joined together at shellmounds, so much so that ritual attention to the ancestors was very likely regarded as essential to ensuring a continuing supply of food.

A redefinition of waste: Deconstructing shell and fish mound formation among coastal groups of southern Brazil

“…Similar interpretations are given for shell middens in other parts of the world, like on the coast of California and the Southeast coast of the United States (Luby and Gruber, 1999;Luby et al, 2006;Russo, 2014Russo, , 2004Sassaman, 2008;Saunders and Russo, 2011;Saunders, 2014). Thus, shellmound interpretation has pivoted from the daily discard of food items to symbolic funerary ritual: from a secular view within prehistoric organization of space, to meaningful structures that were built to communicate a message through generations.…”

Focused, intense and long-term: evidence for granular ark (Anadara granosa) exploitation from late Holocene shell mounds of Blue Mud Bay, northern Australia

“…The focus on these sites has arisen partly out of the high visibility and apparent dominance of these sites in many coastal areas (Bailey, 1999, p. 105). Much like the large mounded deposits of North America (Luby and Gruber, 1999;Luby et al, 2006), South America (Sandweiss, 1996(Sandweiss, , 2003 and South Africa (Buchanan, 1988;Jerardino, 1997), they are monumental features in a landscape that is largely comprised of ephemeral evidence for human occupation. Within northern Australia, interpretations of the shell mounds generally revolve around intermittent and sequential foraging of mollusc species at a relatively low intensity, regardless of whether there are economic or ceremonial causes cited (e.g.…”

Envisioning Colonial Landscapes Using Mission Registers, Radiocarbon, and Stable Isotopes: An Experimental Approach from San Francisco Bay

“…Early discussions focus on the sheer quantity of shell and faunal bone as accumulated deposits of domestic refuse, or "midden" (Gifford 1916;Nelson 1909:335). The presence of human burials suggests that many shellmounds functioned as cemeteries (Leventhal 1993), or venues where ambitious aggrandizers gained and legitimated their power by controlling access to the mound and those buried within them (Luby 2004;Luby and Gruber 1999). In still another interpretation explored in this article, the occurrence of shellmound clusters-comprised of at least one large shellmound flanked by multiple smaller moundssuggests the presence of mounded villages.…”