During tough times, ancient ‘tourists’ sought solace in Florida oyster feasts

Eurekalert.org

Florida Museum of Natural History

IMAGE: Out-of-towners flocked to ceremonial sites on Florida’s Gulf Coast for hundreds of years to socialize and feast. Crystal River was home to one of the most prominent sites, which featured… view more 

Credit: Thomas J. Pluckhahn

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — More than a thousand years ago, people from across the Southeast regularly traveled to a small island on Florida’s Gulf Coast to bond over oysters, likely as a means of coping with climate change and social upheaval.

Archaeologists’ analysis of present-day Roberts Island, about 50 miles north of Tampa Bay, showed that ancient people continued their centuries-long tradition of meeting to socialize and feast, even after an unknown crisis around A.D. 650 triggered the abandonment of most other such ceremonial sites in the region. For the next 400 years, out-of-towners made trips to the island, where shell mounds and a stepped pyramid were maintained by a small group of locals. But unlike the lavish spreads of the past, the menu primarily consisted of oysters, possibly a reflection of lower sea levels and cool, dry conditions.

People’s persistence in gathering at Roberts Island, despite regional hardship, underscores their commitment to community, said study lead author C. Trevor Duke, a researcher in the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Ceramic Technology Lab.

“What I found most compelling was the fact that people were so interested in keeping their ties to that landscape in the midst of all this potential climate change and abandonment,” said Duke, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Florida department of anthropology. “They still put forth the effort to harvest all these oysters and keep these social relationships active. These gatherings probably occurred when different groups of people were getting together and trying to figure out the future.”

Duke and his collaborators compared animal remains from shell mounds and middens – essentially kitchen trash heaps – at Roberts Island and Crystal River, home to an older, more prominent ceremonial site. Their findings showed Crystal River residents “pulled out all the stops” for ritual feasts, regaling visitors with deer, alligator, sharks and dozens of other dishes, while at Roberts Island, feasts consisted of “oysters and very little else,” Duke said.

The Roberts Island ceremonial site, which was vacated around A.D. 1050, was one of the last outposts in what was once a flourishing network of religious sites across the Eastern U.S. These sites were characterized by burial grounds with distinctly decorated ceramics known as Swift Creek and Weeden Island pottery. What differentiated Roberts Island and Crystal River from other sites was that their continuous occupation by a small group of residents who prepared for the influx of hundreds of visitors – not unlike Florida’s tourist towns today.

“These were very cosmopolitan communities,” Duke said. “I’m from Broward County, but I also spent time in the Panhandle, so I’m used to being part of a small residential community that deals with a massive population boom for a month or two months a year. That has been a Florida phenomenon for at least two thousand years.”

Archaeologists estimate small-scale ceremonies began at Crystal River around A.D. 50, growing substantially after a residential community settled the site around A.D. 200. Excavations have uncovered minerals and artifacts from the Midwest, including copper breastplates from the Great Lakes. Similarly, conch shells from the Gulf Coast have been found at Midwestern archaeological sites.

“There was this long-distance reciprocal exchange network going on across much of the Eastern U.S. that Crystal River was very much a part of,” Duke said.

Religious ceremonies at Crystal River included ritual burials and marriage alliances, Duke said, solidifying social ties between different groups of people. But the community was not immune to the environmental and social crises that swept the region, and the site was abandoned around A.D. 650. A smaller ceremonial site was soon established less than a mile downstream on Roberts Island, likely by a remnant of the Crystal River population.

Duke and his collaborators collected samples from mounds and middens at the two ceremonial sites, identifying the species present and calculating the weight of the meat they would have contained. They found that feasts at hard-strapped Roberts Island featured far fewer species. Meat from oysters and other bivalves accounted for 75% of the weight of Robert Island samples and roughly 25% of the weight from Crystal River. Meat from deer and other mammals made up 45% of the weight in Crystal River samples and less then 3% from Roberts Island.

Duke said evidence suggests that Roberts Island residents also had to travel farther to harvest food. As sea levels fell, oyster beds may have shifted seaward, possibly explaining why the Crystal River population relocated to the island, which was small and had few resources.

“Previous research suggests that environmental change completely rearranged the distribution of reefs and the ecosystem,” Duke said. “They had to go far out to harvest these things to keep their ritual program active.”

No one knows what caused the widespread abandonment of most of the region’s ceremonial sites in A.D. 650, Duke said. But the production of Weeden Island pottery, likely associated with religious activities, ramped up as bustling sites became ghost towns.

“That’s kind of counterintuitive,” he said. “This religious movement comes on really strong right as this abandonment is happening. It almost seems like people were trying to do something, create some kind of intervention to stop whatever was happening.”

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Thomas Pluckhahn of the University of South Florida and J. Matthew Compton of Georgia Southern University also co-authored the study.

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Theatregoers in Shakespeare’s day ‘enjoyed peaches, figs and oysters’

On this day ten years ago…
via Theatregoers in Shakespeare’s day ‘enjoyed peaches, figs and oysters’

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In the Chesapeake Bay, Shell Mounds Show a Long History of Sustainable Oyster Harvests

 

Oyster shell middens

Hakaimagazine.com

by Evan Lubofsky

Indigenous peoples in the Chesapeake harvested oysters sustainably for thousands of years—until the introduction of new techniques by Europeans decimated the stocks.

As long as 3,200 years ago, Indigenous peoples living along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay harvested oysters in vast quantities. They extracted the meat and piled the shells into mounds known as middens. Archaeologists have long studied these shell mounds—some of which are meters deep—for a window into the lifestyles of these peoples: what they ate, how they hunted, and the tools they used. Now, clues unearthed in these mounds also suggest they likely knew a thing or two about how to sustainably harvest oysters.

“Despite the significant role oysters played in the Native American diet back then, they weren’t overexploited,” says archaeologist Alex Jansen, leader of a recent study analyzing the middens.

“Even though it is possible that these early societies may not have been practicing sustainable harvesting intentionally, it appears they were able to balance management with fishery needs,” Jansen adds. “That’s something we need to get back to.”

Since the early 1900s, overfishing in the Chesapeake Bay has led to steep declines in oyster stocks. Around 1990, oyster harvests across the bay were less than one percent of historical levels. Harvesting techniques introduced by European colonists during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as dredging and tonging, were responsible for much of this enormous toll. These destructive techniques rip living oysters from the reef, often before they’re fully grown, reducing the size and damaging the structure of the reef.

Given that oysters play an important role in filtering algae, plankton, and other particles from the water, the depletion of the bay’s oysters caused the water quality to suffer. The destruction of wave-buffering oyster reefs also reduced the protection they offered to the shoreline.

Examining shell middens near Chesapeake Bay showed Jansen that the Indigenous peoples’ harvesting practices were much less destructive, which is what allowed them to exploit oysters for thousands of years.

Jansen also found tools such as ceramics, projectile points, and stones used for heating water at the study site. But based on his analysis, these tools were not used for oyster harvesting, which, he says, was mostly done by hand. He also noted the large sizes of the oyster shells, which suggests the oysters were given time to grow and reproduce before being snagged.

Throughout the thousands of years captured in the shell middens, “the oysters were largely consistent in shape and size,” Jansen says. He says the oysters were likely harvested from the water close to shore, rather than from deeper waters where reefs form. “By leaving the reefs alone and intact, Native American harvesters were able to give the oysters a chance to reproduce and restock the bay.”

Today, after years of restoration efforts, oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay are showing signs of a rebound. Carmera Thomas, a program manager for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, says that over the past few decades, millions of baby oysters attached to recycled oyster shells have been placed on sanctuary reefs throughout the bay, contributing to the restoration of oyster reefs on target tributaries. In 2017, a bill proposed by state officials and watermen in Maryland to open more than two million square kilometers of oyster sanctuary to harvest did not pass.

Despite the momentum, Thomas says pressure on wild oyster populations will continue unless we learn lessons from the past and put some ancient practices into play.

“If we as a population were more diligent about restoring what is taken out of the bay, using less invasive tools, and not harvesting as much … it would put less stress on the population,” Thomas says.

Jansen agrees. Even though we no longer have the same technological limitations as our ancestors, that doesn’t mean we can’t heed the lessons of the past and leverage simpler approaches. Only this time, the act of conservation would undoubtedly be intentional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ancient Shell Middens of The Pacific Northwest

Topic: Oyster Shell Middens

Recently while on a birding vacation in Washington State near the Quinault Indian Reservation we happened upon a couple of ancient oyster shell middens (piles of accumulated shells). Below is information I found on shell sites here in the northwest plus a couple of photos my husband took.

Shellfish Heritage
A Heritage of Harvest
Ancient Affections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Romans adored them . . . the French ible and were subject to dramatic over-harvest-
loved them . . . the Japanese cultivated
them . . . and Native Americans revered them. This beloved and renowned resource is the oyster––queen of the bivalves. Suffice it to say, people and cultures around the world have long shared a romantic and culinary obsession with oysters and other shellfish.
ing. Conservation measures emerged in Europe in the 17 and 18 centuries.

In France’s Basin of Arcachon, for instance, harvest bans helped restore severely depleted oyster reefs only to be followed by repeated cycles of ruin and recovery. The Japanese pioneered oyster aquaculture tech- niques several centuries ago after observing oyster larvae settling on the leaves of bamboo stalks used in Manila clam fisheries.

A Northwest Tradition . .
Few natural resources provide a more fitting symbol of a region’s heritage and environment than Washington’s rich shellfish resources. Pacific Northwest tribes have lived in the region for more than 10,000 years, and archeologists have uncovered shell middens (piles of accumulated shells) dating back more than 4,000 years. Shellfish provided sustenance and figured prominently in tribal spiritual beliefs. So ingrained are shellfish in tribal customs that the native Quinault language includes a phrase, ta’aWshi xa’iits’os, meaning “clam hungry.”

Captain George Vancouver and other early explor- ers of the Pacific Northwest observed tidelands strewn with oysters and other shellfish. The influx of settlers that soon followed, however, placed unprecedented demands on these rich resources.
In the 1850s, tribal governments in Washington Territory signed treaties with the U.S. government relinquishing land, but reserving rights to fish and harvest shellfish in usual and accustomed areas except for staked or cultivated shellfish beds. U.S. district court decisions in 1974 and 1994 reaf- firmed these treaty rights. Washington state sold many of its tidelands to private landowners under the 1895 Bush and Callow acts to bolster and pro- mote oyster production.
Commercial shellfish harvesting took off in the early 1850s. Oyster-laden schooners transported native oysters from Willapa Bay (known then as Shoal-Water Bay), and later Puget Sound, to gold prospectors and entrepreneurs in northern California who had exhausted local oyster stocks and paid as much as a dollar a piece for the gems. The venture proved enormously lucrative, but also devastating to Olympia oyster populations in many Northwest areas by the late 1800s. The results prompted growers to explore different cultivation techniques, such as grading and diking oyster beds, and to import and cultivate oyster species from other parts of the world. The imports also created unexpected problems with the introduction of such non-native plants and animals as spartina and oyster-drill snails.
The most successful import was the Japanese or Pacific oyster, first introduced in Puget Sound in the early 1920s and a mainstay of the West Coast shellfish industry ever since. A side benefit was the unintentional introduction of the Manila clam, which has emerged as the state’s top com- mercially farmed clam. Aquaculture practices evolved dramatically in the ensuing decades
to include hatchery and nursery systems and numerous other advances.

Fascinating Facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

• Indian Tribes have harvested shellfish in the Pacific Northwest for more than 4,000 years.
• The Japanese are credited with pioneering shellfish aquaculture techniques.
• The Olympia oyster, the only native Northwest oyster, is named after and helped bring the state capital to Olympia.
• Tribal governments in Washington Territory signed treaties in the 1850s relinquishing land and reserving rights to fish and harvest shellfish.
• The Bush and Callow acts of 1895 put many of Washington’s tidelands into private ownership for oyster production.

Commercial production is only part of the state’s shellfish story. Shellfish serve as cul- tural and environmental icons in the Pacific Northwest, shaping modern social customs in much the same way they have influenced tribal traditions. Here’s a glimpse into this rich and thriving heritage:
• The first weekend each October more than 25,000 people gather in Shelton in Mason County for the many activities of OysterFest, including the oppor- tunity to sample wares at the Washington State Seafood Festival and to cheer on competitors in the West Coast Oyster Shucking Championship.
• EveryNovemberagroupknownastheclamdiggers, descendants of pioneers who settled in Washington Territory prior to statehood in 1889, gather in Lynden in Whatcom County to share a bowl of clam chowder and to honor their ancestors and the state. The tradition started in 1891 when four Lynden men spent two days traveling to Birch Bay in Whatcom County to gather clams for a community feast.
• Every day scores of residents and tourists gather at waterfront restaurants and oyster bars from Seattle to Ilwaco to enjoy the bounty of fresh, home-grown shellfish.
• Citizensandorganizationsareworkingtogetherto set up community shellfish farms to involve people in the experience of shellfish farming and to instill a finer appreciation of the resource. The first two farms are located in Drayton Harbor in Whatcom County and Henderson Inlet in Thurston County.
Photo courtesy Taylor Shellfish Farms
Harvesting longline oysters in Samish Bay, Skagit County
• More than 30,000 people a day participate in the state’s biggest recreational shellfish adventure— razor clam digging on the coast. Diggers pursue the clams by daylight or lantern based on “shows” in the sand as the clams attempt to burrow their way to safety. The popular fishery has been described as one of those wonderfully peculiar expressions of the Northwest’s natural heritage.
A closer look reveals a Northwest love affair that isn’t fading away, but instead is being renewed with great opportunities to enjoy and celebrate the ancient resource—a resource that continues to anchor and define the Northwest lifestyle.

Original material:
puget sound archives
Photos by Michael Poe

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