Shell Midden

[unclemac]

Went SW WA this weekend and hooked up with the local archeologist for the area... he took us to a significant habitation spot (shell midden) that took up several acres. It was in conservancy so you couldn't take anything with you BUT artifacts and worked material were pretty easy to spot so it was all "catch and release". Fascination spot, on a hill top where EVERY rock, stone, pebble that you spotted had to have been transported there. Lots of simple oval, river polished quartz pebbles with no obvious use or function, lots of fire cracked rock, elk bones, fish bones, cockle, whelk and oyster shell everywhere, in deep deposits. All of this in a deep matrix of what has become black soil, which is of itself exotic as the underlaying ground is meters and meters of thick tsunami deposited sand. I was told that there are still tribal members that remember visiting the spot as children to pay respects to buried ancestors that had been interred there within family memory. And all of this for people that still live in the surrounding area but are not recognized as a distinct band and have no official tribal recognition. It is a "known" spot among folk that have that sort of awareness and respected as protected among them, it is also kind of hard to find but easy to get to. I posted one of the finds we put back, just sitting there poking out the shells and black earth.

 

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[gilmerman]

Sounds like a wonderful opportunity. Thanks

 

[H.P.]

That’s very interesting, Florida natives didn’t bury loved ones in shell middens, shell fields, shell benches or any kind of shell structure, Sand mound burial was the preferred method..sounds like someone’s tryin to lay claim to a site that might not have any ties to em...Then there’s the other side of this, I might be be completely out in left field without a paddle on this one..Either way, sounds like you had a fabulous experience.

 

[unclemac]

...these folk are long time residents and the site is culturally and archeologically tied to the tribe specifically. Site has about a 1,500 year history above the latest tsunami layer. It became more of a quasi-religious (burials/celebrations) site after it lost its village site usefulness as the land forms changed and canoe access to the site ceased when sloughs silted up.

 

[southfork]

That’s very interesting, Florida natives didn’t bury loved ones in shell middens, shell fields, shell benches or any kind of shell structure, Sand mound burial was the preferred method..sounds like someone’s tryin to lay claim to aThe Emeryville Shellmound, in Emeryville, California, is a sacred burial site of the Ohlone people, a once-massive archaeological shell midden deposit (dark, highly organic soil, temple and burial ground containing a high concentration of human food waste remains, including shellfish). It was one of a complex of five or six mounds along the mouth of the perennial Temescal Creek, on the east shore of San Francisco Bay between Oakland and Berkeley. It was the largest of the over 425 shellmounds that surrounded San Fran… site that might not have any ties to em...Then there’s the other side of this, I might be be completely out in left field without a paddle on this one..Either way, sounds like you had a fabulous experience.

Maybe a west coast tradition

 

[eyemustdigtreasure]

Sounds like you know your stuff. This (mid-section?) of a Biface is cool...!
You say this material was transported there...from where?
Beautiful, even outside the sunlight, I'd bet - easy to spot...

 

[unclemac]

this is a site on the highest spot on a peninsula that had a slough to the bay. A short 2 minute paddle to the beach. The bay was FILLED with oysters and clams (and fish and seals and and and) ... in fact it still is.

 

[eyemustdigtreasure]

I'd consider it an honor to have seen that place, that village site....! Greasy midden, from decades, centuries of butchering....!

 

[unclemac]

pretty untouched too... a couple small archeological test digs but no survey and the tweakers haven't found it yet. It is a huge site.

 

[Garscale]

pretty untouched too... a couple small archeological test digs but no survey and the tweakers haven't found it yet. It is a huge site.

If it us a confirmed cemetary it should be left alone. I have never seen a midden also be a cemetary though. If it's just a midden I dont see why you couldn't dig and keep artifacts.

 

[unclemac]

It is protected in a conservancy. It is not a midden in the way you may be thinking of it... a pile of shells in one spot. It is a midden that covers the entire site.

 

[Out Of Time]

Here's an article that may be of interest. Provocative, which ever side you're on.

Save Marinwood-Lucas Valley - our community, our future: Major MiWok Treasure Trove found...and paved over by developers in Larkspur.

 

[tomclark]

I have read many papers that reference burials within shell middens in FL. Text below is more Ohio Valley but still relates. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/vie...99935413.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935413-e-75
"Shellfish also appear to have been associated with burial in the Southeast. Burial in shell middens is common in Archaic and early Woodland cultures. In general, this has been regarded by researchers as a practical solution to the problem of disposal of the dead. More recently, the association of burials and shell has been viewed as a referent to Native American core beliefs in “rebirth and rejuvenation” (Claassen 2010, 173). Claassen (1991, 1992, 2008, 2010, 2015) has presented the most extended argument for this viewpoint. Using ethnographic and archaeological examples from throughout the New World, she argued that the shell mounds of the Ohio Valley were, in fact, burial mounds. According to Sassaman (2006, 149), “the very first use of shell in the middle Savannah was for mortuary purposes.” Indeed, Sassaman suggested that Claassen’s hypotheses for the mortuary uses of shell in the Ohio Valley “may very well explain the origins of freshwater shellfishing in the middle Savannah, and perhaps the St. Johns basin too” (Sassaman et al., 2006, 561). Against this backdrop, it is curious that formal burials are not present in shell rings, although scattered human bone is found. Still, this is consistent with Claassen’s (2010, 36–37) observation that, except for the Stallings Island site (about which more later) shell-bearing sites founded relatively late in the Archaic on south-flowing rivers either lack burials or have very few. Although burials are not found in shell rings, Sanger (2015) agreed that shell carried a heavy symbolic load in those structures as well. As will be seen, this viewpoint is not without critics.
In all four of the aforementioned areas, some researchers now argue that shell mounds and rings were not simply deposits of domestic garbage but locations of population aggregation, interaction, ceremony, and feasting. In concert with the increasing acceptance of the presence of Middle and Late Archaic earthen mounds in Louisiana and Florida, more researchers suspect social and ceremonial functions for large, mounded, Archaic shell-bearing sites in the mid-South, lower Atlantic and eastern Gulf Coasts, and the St. Johns River. While details vary from region to region (and researcher to researcher), and dramatic differences exist in the types of materials deposited and depositional processes that created these structures, many agree that these sites are the first cultural landscapes intentionally created for remembrance of the past, celebration of the present, and preparation for the future."

 

[southfork]

Here's an article that may be of interest. Provocative, which ever side you're on.

Save Marinwood-Lucas Valley - our community, our future: Major MiWok Treasure Trove found...and paved over by developers in Larkspur.

Bottom Line it was a burial it should have been left untouched . But it was about big bucks and not sure a Pomo casino tribe overseeing a Miwok tribes burial was the right thing to do . Where were the Miwok's ?

 

[Out Of Time]

Bottom Line it was a burial it should have been left untouched . But it was about big bucks and not sure a Pomo casino tribe overseeing a Miwok tribes burial was the right thing to do . Where were the Miwok's ?

Graton Band represents Miwok and Pomo.

From their site...

The Graton Rancheria community is a federation of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo groups recognized as a tribe by the US Congress. The Miwok of west Marin County have, through the years, been referred to as Marshall Indians, Marin Miwok, Tomales, Tomales Bay, and Hookooeko. The Bodega Miwok (aka, Olamentko) traditionally lived in the area of Bodega Bay. The neighboring Southern Pomo Sebastopol group lived just north and east of the Miwok. The town of Sebastopol is located about one mile midway between the north boundary of Miwok territory and the southern edge of Southern Pomo territory.

 

[Out Of Time]

It's easy to speculate that the lime from burned shells were utillized for mortuary purposes beyond whatever ornaments (shell or other) may have been buried along with a person.
Also, perhaps over time, waste disposal areas become landforms and occupation moves from adjacent to on top. I think fire hearths and larger utilitarian objects found within might illustrate this.