Experimental archaeology conducted by Henshilwood and colleagues revealed that it is possible for a handful of people to process a very large number of mussels in a relatively short period of time. These tests showed that a group of 10 people could collect and process about 60,000 mussels in about one week, producing a net mass of 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of shells. That could provide almost 20% of the necessary food for 600 person days (that is, 10 people could dine solely on mussels for 12 days, or they could dry the meat and use it sparingly for about two months). Chances are good that nobody could live solely on mussels for days at a time, and it is likely that dried mussels were stored.
Based on this, Henshilwood and colleagues argued that the shellmounds could be the result of a generalized hunting and gathering group. Archaeological evidence of this effort, they said, could be identified by the presence of hearths.
Residence or Logistics?
Scholars are divided as to the specific role shellfish played in hunter-gatherer living strategies. Jerardino and others have surmised that during the most rapid increase in the megamiddens, people actually lived at the megamiddens, subsisting primarily on shellfish.
Parkington, on the other hand, argues that the middens were never where the people lived, but rather the result of logistical behaviors, where people processed the shellfish at the sites, transporting the meat alone away to their residences. He argues that even though the middens are huge, they still represent only a part, if a substantial part, of the diet of hunter-gatherers, rather than the majority of intake.
Sources
A bibliography has been collected for this project.
