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Diet and the Age of Californian Shellmounds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

E. W. Gifford
E. W. Gifford*
Affiliation:
Museum of AnthropologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyCalifornia
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Extract

In shell middens bones and shells are surviving indicators of the diet of the former inhabitants. Unless carbonized, the plants consumed leave no obvious trace.

A comparison of Californian and Fijian (Viti Levu Island) shellmounds reveals a striking similarity in the quantity of bone and an even more striking dissimilarity in the quantity of shell. In both areas bone constitutes less than onehalf of one per cent of the weight of the mound mass. In Fiji shell constitutes on the average 13 per cent by weight, whereas the average in California is 52 per cent—four times as great. The following speculations are based on these facts.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , January 1949 , pp. 223 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1949

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References

Cook, S. F. 1946. “A Reconsideration of Shellmounds with Respect to Population and Nutrition.#x201D; American Antiquity, Vol. 12, pp. 50–53.Google Scholar
Gifford, E. W. 1916. “Composition of California Shellmounds.” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 12, pp. 1–29. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Gifford, E. W. 1939. “The Coast Yuki.” Anthropos, Vol. 34, pp. 292–375. Salzburg.Google Scholar
Nelson, N. C. 1909. “Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region.” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 7, pp. 309–356. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Steadman, W. R. 1941. “Edible Shell Fish in the Fiji Islands.” The South Australian Naturalist, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 8 and 9. Adelaide.Google Scholar