The earliest sites of the coastal Western Cape contained small shell middens, and the contents are first dominated by whelks and limpets, particularly granite limpets (Cymbula granatina and Scutellastra granularis). But beginning about 2700 BP, as the mounds began expanding, their content became overwhelmingly black mussels (Choromytilus meridionalis). After about 2200 BP, limpets and whelks again became part of the subsistence base.
Black mussels are found in low-intertidal and subtidal zones, and are denser and higher calorie-yielding compared to whelks and limpets, which are found in mid-intertidal zones. Also, black mussels have greater resilience to harvesting; today despite the massive harvests of 2,000 years ago, they are abundant in the Western Cape region.
Why did the people stop eating black mussels? Over time during the macro midden building phase, the black mussels began to average smaller in size, perhaps a result of high levels of coastal inorganic sediments or possibly overfishing. In addition, both pottery and sheep became available in the region at about 2000 years ago, and archaeologists believe that the residents of the Western Cape may have turned to pastoralism.
Sources
A bibliography has been collected for this project.
