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Journal of the North Atlantic
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Introduction
Data presented here indicate that clams were
important to the diet of native peoples, and therefore
possibly to the settlement pattern, along the Maine
coast, rather than being reserve food of convenience
for winter or bad-weather use. The importance of
clams in coastal Maine pre-Contact diets is not an
effect of ecological change or population growth in
the last two or three millennia. Clams may have been
relatively more important to the diet compared with
vertebrates during the Late Archaic period than during
more recent Ceramic (Woodland) period (Spiess
and Lewis 2001).
The coast of Maine, its ecology and cultures,
have changed dramatically over time since the last
glaciation. Coastal bedrock has been subsiding at
various rates along the coast, with maximum postglacial
relative emergence about 13,000 (cal) years
ago. Combined with post-glacial sea-level rise,
the coast has been transgressed by the sea at varying
rates (Belknap et al. 1989, Kelley et al. 2010),
with a generally sequential erosion of the older
coastal sites (Fig. 1). Tidal amplification, increasing
intertidal zone size, and the cooling effects of
tide-driven upwelling have accelerated during the
last few millennia (Spiess and Lewis 2001:159–161
for references). Evidence (e.g, stone tools) of some
of the earlier coastal archaeological sites survives
underwater (Kelley et al. 2010), but the terrestrial
coastal archaeological record has been truncated.
The erosional effects of relative sea-level rise have
been less intense along the central coast of Maine,
where the earliest surviving terrestrial components
date to about 5000 B.P. (radiocarbon), during the
Late Archaic period (Bourque 1995, Spiess and
Lewis 2001). Several Late Archaic cultures (Smallstemmed
point, Moorhead phase, 5000 to 3800 B.P.)
preceded a terminal Archaic Susquehanna tradition
(3800 to 2800 B.P.) occupation of the coast. After ca.
2800 B.P., a sequence of cultures used ceramic pots,
subdivided into the Early, Middle, and Late Ceramic
period (also called Woodland, or Maritime Woodland
elsewhere in New England and the Maritime
Provinces).
Shellfish (clam, mussel, oyster) have played a
part in coastal Maine subsistence for at least 9000
years (Kelley et al. 2010), though much of the early
record has been submerged. The terrestrial coastal
sites that remain uneroded often contain substantial
amounts of shell, called shell middens. Many
archeologists have assumed or commented casually
that the shells in these middens, which are
mostly softshell clam (Mya arenaria), represent a
“fall back” or predictable reserve food resource,
particularly for the winter, based on some ethnographic
accounts from the region (Spiess and Lewis
2001:139–140). Others have speculated about the
importance of shellfish in regional coastal diet, and
its relatively recent importance based on a perceived
increase in the number of shell middens about 2000
years ago (Braun 1974, Perlman 1980, Yesner 1980);
however, these authors failed to understand the erosional
effects of sea-level rise.
Even after 150 years of investigation of Maine
shell middens (Spiess 1985), there are only 3
sites where quantitative work, such as counting
of shellfish hinge parts or weight or volume estimates
of shell and bone, can be used to estimate
the numbers of individual shellfish harvested and
compare weight or numbers of shellfish with that of
vertebrate faunal remains: Indiantown Island near
Boothbay (Spiess et al. 2006), Kidder Point (Spiess
and Hedden 1983) on upper Penobscot Bay, and
the Turner Farm (Bourque 1995, Spiess and Lewis
2001) on North Haven Island in the middle of Penobscot
Bay (Fig. 2). The lower levels from the
People of the Clam: Shellfish and Diet in Coastal Maine Late Archaic and
Ceramic Period Sites
Arthur E. Spiess*
Abstract - Relatively few shell midden sites around the Gulf of Maine have been excavated and analyzed for the quantity
of shellfish incorporated into the site. Such data would help us understand the intensity of past shellfish-harvesting pressure
on nearby shellfish beds, and the ef fects of shellfish collection on settlement patterns. Moreover , the relative amounts
of protein contributed to diet by shellfish versus vertebrates, based on the remains discarded in the midden, indicate that
shellfish may have provided the majority of dietary protein. In particular, the softshell clam (Mya arenaria) was of primary
importance to regional coastal subsistence and not just a bad-w eather, last-resort food.
North American East Coast Shell Midden Research
Journal of the North Atlantic
*Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 65 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333; arthur.spiess@maine.gov.
2017 Special Volume 10:105–112
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Turner Farm are Late Archaic in age, but the upper
strata at the Turner Farm and the other 2 sites are
all Middle to early Late Ceramic, or Middle to early
Late Woodland in age.
Corn, bean, and squash horticulture did not arrive
in Maine until 1100 to 1200 A.D, at the beginning of
the Late Ceramic or late Woodland period, and then
it was confined to southwestern Maine (Asch Sidell
Figure 1. Relative sea level (shoreline elevation) along the coast of Maine since ice retreat, in calibrated or calendar years.
Note that relative sea-level rise has been about 2 m in the last 4000 years. However, tidal amplitude has increased as well.
Graphic from Joseph Kelley, used with permission. For further information see Kelley et al. (2010).
Figure 2. Three shell middens
with quantitative shell and
vertebrate fauna data shown
on a graphic of the central
Maine coast.
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1999). Horticulture did not penetrate into the central
Maine coast or the Canadian Maritime provinces
until after European arrival. Therefore, the small
sample of shell midden sites examined in this paper
were created by hunter-gatherer-fishers, without the
effects of agricultural carbohydrates on diet or the
effects of seasonal farming on settlement pattern.
The Data Base: Shell Midden Numbers, Chr onology,
and Sea-Level Rise
There are ~2000 shell middens, or habitation
sites incorporating shell into the site matrix, located
along the Maine shoreline. A total of 1730 shell midden
sites are currently listed in the Maine prehistoric
archaeological database (MHPC data). Mya or softshell
clam comprises 95% or more of the shell in these
sites. Mussel shell, which preserves poorly, and other
shellfish species (e.g., hard shell clam or quahog
[Mercenaria], oyster [Crassostrea]) comprise most
of the rest (Spiess and Lewis 2001 with references).
Only 320 of these sites have been assessed for
age of occupation either by excavation or recovery
of age-diagnostic artifacts from eroded context. (For
this paper, I omit Contact period and Euroamerican
historic components; thus my assessment is for pre-
European-age sites.) Ninety-five percent of these
320 sites have recorded Ceramic period (ca. 2800 to
400 B.P.) components exclusively, or a Ceramic period
upper stratigraphic component. Approximately
40 sites have Late Archaic components (12%),
including 15 identified as Moorehead phase and
21 as Susquehanna tradition. Among the sites with
known-age Ceramic period components, there are
22 identified as Early Ceramic (Vinette I ceramics,
2800 to 2200 B.P.), 85 as Middle Ceramic (ca. 2200
to 800 B.P.), and 83 as Late Ceramic (cord-wrapped
stick and later ceramics, 800 to 400 B.P.) It is likely
that the larger and deeper shell-middens are overrepresented
in the samples of sites with “known age”
cultural components because they have attracted
more professional archaeological attention. These
larger sites tend to be the ones with the earlier components.
The majority of the smaller sites, mostly
not assessed for age, are probably Middle and/or
Late Ceramic. Thus, the vast majority of the ~2000
shell midden sites along the Maine coast cover a
roughly 1800-year span of time from about 2200 to
about 400 B.P.
As mentioned above, relative sea level is rising
along the coast of Maine. All of the Early and
Middle Archaic coastal archaeological record is
now under water (e.g., Kelley et al. 2010). Younger
coastal sites are differentially preserved in lesseroded
condition. Mid-coast Maine (Penobscot Bay)
has the oldest un-eroded shell midden layers at the
base of some sites: Late Archaic, with a maximum
age of ~5000 years. The coastal archaeological
record could be conceived as a sliding window of
visibility for shell middens. They have been formed
for millennia by people living on the shore near clam
or other shellfish beds, and then eroded as the coast,
mud flats, and estuaries move inland with sea-level
rise. The window of time for shell midden survival
is a little larger in mid-coast Maine then elsewhere
along the coast because the rate of relative sea-level
rise is lower there for unknown reasons.
Publications from 40 years ago (Braun 1974,
Yesner 1980) often focused on a supposed sudden
efflorescence of shellfish productivity and midden
formation, and gave the impression that Gulf of
Maine coast Indians “discovered” shellfish about
2000 to 3000 years ago. This impression is simply an
effect of differential preservation due to relative sealevel
rise and erosion (Kellogg 1995). Enough Late
Archaic components are still extant (with oyster,
quahog, and softshell clam), and enough dated oyster,
softshell, and hard shell clam shells have been
recovered from inshore sea-bottom cores associated
with an archaeological site (e.g., Kelley et al. 2010),
to know that oysters and both species of clams have
been available on the Maine coast for 10,000 years.
Shell Middens, Shellfish, and Coastal Settlement
Patterns
Shell midden locations and coastal settlement
patterns are one possible expression of the importance
of shellfish in prehistoric diet, in addition to
the quantitative data explored below. A comparison
of coastal archaeological site location and modern
(ca. 2010) mapped clam-flats (MHPC and Maine Office
of GIS data) visually reveals a high correlation
between the site locations and clam flats (Fig. 3).
Most of the shell middens are 2000 years or less
in age, as discussed above. I assume that the clam
flats may have been present for centuries to a millennium,
with some recent enhancement in clam-flat
area in the upper reaches of bays and estuaries due
to relative sea-level rise and migration of estuarine
environments inland.
Shell midden sites were apparently not, however,
placed at locations specifically for clam-flat
access. Statistical work by the late Douglas Kellogg
(1987, 1994, 1995), as student of David Sanger,
indicate that more than 80% of coastal shell midden
sites are located on relatively flat, relatively welldrained
pieces of ground (of an acre or less in size,
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sometimes), with an east through south or southwest
aspect, and immediately abutting a cobble, gravel, or
sand beach. Even a small or “pocket” beach that was
accessible at all tides served to attract local adjacent
settlement. The Ceramic period people were birchbark
canoe-based travelers, who camped where they
could land or launch a canoe at any tide (Ibid.).
These sites are also all within a few hundred yards
or less of a clam flat, so access from the habitation
site to the clam flat was by foot and/or canoe with
minimal effort.
Thus it seems clear that along with other factors,
access to clam flats was a major determinant
for coastal settlement location (and shell midden
formation at the settlements). Shell midden locations
may be useful in testing hypotheses of shellfish
importance in the diet. If clams or other shellfish
were an emergency resource, then foot access to the
clam flats or shellfish beds during weeks of stormy
winter weather would have been a necessity. Denys
(1908:359) in fact states that oysters were “a great
manna for the winter when the weather does not permit
going on the hunt” in 17th-century Nova Scotia
(see also Spiess and Lewis 2001:139–140 for discussion
and other references). If clams were utilized for
more than a bad-weather emergency resource, then
presumably the need would not have been for so
physically close an association, but rather an easy
canoe paddle to access any clam flat within a few
kilometers in reasonably protected inshore water of
the coast would have sufficed. Unfortunately, the
resolution of the data (e.g., site locations, clam-flat
size and location) do not at present allow a test of the
hypothesis of winter/bad-weather foot access versus
canoe-based access to the clam flats.
A focus on winter-season clam harvesting would
support the “bad-weather emergency resource”
hypothesis. It is relatively easy to cut a section
through a clam shell and detect the season of death
or harvest, in the case of the shells in a midden (e.g.,
Spiess and Hedden 1983:106–107, Spiess and Lewis
2001:49–54 with references). The key is reading
the width and growth status of the last layer formed
when the clam died. Only a relatively few Maine
shell middens have been investigated with shellfish
seasonality techniques (A.E. Spiess, unpubl. data).
There are some sites with warm-season (late spring,
summer, fall) harvests (e.g., Kidder Point; Spiess and
Hedden 1983), some with cold-season harvests (winter
and early spring; e.g., Indiantown Island; Spiess
et al. 2006:177), and shell middens with multiple
seasons represented (e.g., Turner Farm; Spiess and
Lewis 2001). We do have enough information from
clam and vertebrate season-of-harvest information at
various sites to say that Ceramic period people were
living on the coast of Maine all year around. The
coast was not deserted, nor were shellfish ignored,
for any particular season during the Ceramic period.
Moreover, the numbers of shellfish harvested seem
beyond “emergency” food use, as we shall see below.
Figure 3. The spatial coincidence of coastal archaeological sites (shell middens, blue squares ½ km scale) and modern (ca.
2010 mapped) Mya shellfish flats (red-filled areas) in the Mount Desert/Frenchman’s Bay area of the Maine coast. View is
~44 km across, east to west.
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Quantification of Shell Fish
Before examining quantitative data, we must
point out that the soft parts of clams, and shellfish
in general, are a source of protein but not fat. In a
hunter-gatherer-fisher diet without substantial carbohydrates
from corn or crops, calories are derived
from fat at the rate of 9000 kcal/kilogram. And if
fat is in short supply, the body will derive calories
from meat protein at 4000 kcal/kilogram of (dry)
meat, but that is a starvation diet and will eventually
cause kidney function problems (e.g., Guyton
and Hall 2000:804ff; Scrimshaw and Young 1976).
During the Archaic and Ceramic periods along the
Maine coast, dietary fat (calories) was derived from
fish oil and mammal and bird fat, including seal oil.
What we will look at now is the shellfish contribution
to the protein portion of the Maine coastal Native
American diet. See also Erlandson (1988) for a
primarily west-coast–oriented review, including the
important factor that shellfish contribute primarily to
the protein fraction of diet.
The most-detailed quantification of clam shell
and vertebrate bone of a Maine shell midden so far
accomplished was done for an excavation project
on a large shell-midden on Indiantown Island, near
Boothbay, central Maine coast (Spiess et al. 2006).
The Indiantown Island site shell-midden covers
over 3000 m2, with the deepest portion, ~850 m2 in
areal extent, having a depth of 1.0 to 1.3 m. Thirtyfive
m2 were excavated. Shell chondrophores were
counted, shell was weighed, column samples were
fine screened, vertebrate bone was separated into
fish, mammal, and bird and counted and weighed
(as well as identified, tested for season of death,
etc.). The 1.3-m-deep main portion of the site was
accumulated during the Middle and Late Ceramic
period, beginning about 2300 years ago, and ending
about 600 years ago, for a total span of 1700
years. During this entire time, the season of occupation
was winter and early spring, with a major
spring cod fish (Gadus) harvest at the end of the
occupation.
As mentioned, the deepest part of the site covers
850 m2. We calculated 510,000 kg of shell in this
area. Based on the size distribution of the clams, 150
clam shells weigh ~2 kg; so this midden represents
millions of clams that were harvested. We calculated
980,000 kg (~1 million kg) of clam shell in the site
as it is preserved on the landscape, or ~35 million
clams harvested and deposited in the midden (data in
Spiess et al. 2006:179:table 15). Most of that harvest
occurred within a 1700-year span of time, or an average
of 20,000 clams/year. There are large gaps in
the Ceramic period sequence, so peak harvest years
may have approached 50,000 clams, in a seasonal
occupation of 4 months or so.
Clams are about 2/3 shell and 1/3 wet-meat
weight when alive, so the total harvest at the site
is about 1.5 million kg of clams. A rough average
annual clam harvest rate would be 1000 kg per year
over 1700 years. That is the level of productivity
that the Indiantown Island site Ceramic period inhabitants
would have achieved from the clam flats
they harvested. Today, Maine softshell clams are
harvested by hand in the intertidal zone using steel
digging forks. The Ceramic period people probably
used digging sticks or fingers, but the general approach
was similar. The modern softshell clam harvest
from mud flats in some of the most productive
coastal towns of Maine range from 5000 to 100,000
lbs per year, or roughly 2500 to 50,000 kg per township
(Maine DMR 2014). Hancock and Sullivan
townships, in upper Frenchman’s Bay near Acadia
National Park, consistently have the largest annual
clam harvests along the Maine coast from about 20
linear km of clam flats. Combined, these townships
yield 50,000 to 200,000 lbs of clams per year (variable
harvest over several decades). At 1000 kg (2200
pounds) per year, the inhabitants of Indiantown
Island may have been approaching the sustainable
harvest limit on the clam flats within a kilometer or
two radius of the site, although the site may only
have been occupied for 4 months of each year.
At a smaller, eroded clam-midden site on Kidder
Point, in upper Penobscot Bay, a colleague and I
hand-counted about 32,000 clam hinges in the excavated
area (Spiess and Hedden 1983). The site was
a summer camp site, of Early and early Middle Ceramic
age. The midden was not a single occupation,
but a limited number of occupations over ~500 years
of time. Although the site was too disturbed to yield
useful data for shorter occupation spans (individual
occupations), direct counting of clam numbers indicated
substantial harvest rates for clams during a
warm-season occupation.
Over a period of more than a decade, Bourque
excavated from the Turner Farm site, a large shellmidden
about 1.5 m deep on North Haven Island in
the middle of Penobscot Bay, an estimated half of
the total volume of the site (Bourque 1995, Spiess
and Lewis 2001). The earliest shell-midden layer,
Occupation 2, is Late Archiac Moorehead phase,
about 4200 years old. Occupation 3 is Susquehanna
tradition, about 3600 years old. Occupation 4 is a
series of Ceramic period (Woodland) occupations,
encompassing from the beginning to the end of the
Ceramic period. The site was excavated without
screening, but we (Spiess and Lewis 2001:92–97)
did some quantification of shellfish in the site from
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We have total clam-shell weight and bird, fish,
and mammal bone weights (and counts) for the
excavated middle Ceramic period occupation at
Indiantown Island (Table 1). It is fairly simple to
correct from whole carcass bone weight for fish,
bird, and mammal to total (wet) meat weight, and
also from softshell clam shell weight to total (wet)
clam meat weight (see Spiess et al. 2006 for data). In
large mammals, bone weight multiplied by 15 gives
a reasonable wet meat weight. In large fish (such
as cod) the multiplier is 50 (Spiess et al 2006). For
clams, wet meat weight is 55% of shell weight, so
a multiplier of 0.55 is applied. Twelve kilograms of
fish bone, mostly cod, constituted tens of thousands
of bone fragments at the Indiantown Island site.
At Indiantown Island, the relative protein
contribution to the seasonal (winter, early spring
primarily) diet can be calculated from the remains
deposited in the Middle Ceramic period excavated
area of the midden. Mammals contributed about 2%,
fish (primarily cod) about 7%, and clams about 90%
of the protein meat weight (Spiess et al. 2006:182).
Similarly, at Kidder Point, we weighed clam
shells and vertebrate bone. At that summer Early
Ceramic period site, mammals contributed about
13% and clams about 86% of the protein. Fish and
birds were insignificant components of the remains
there. Similar results have been obtained by analysis
of shell midden sites in the Quoddy Region of New
Brunswick (Black 1992), where calculated total
meat weight contribution by shellfish ranged from
35% to 95% in 9 Maritime Woodland components.
The quantification of shell and bone at the Turner
Farm is on a less-precise basis than at the Indiantown
and Kidder Point sites. For various reasons, we
can only compare the relative diet contributions of
different faunal taxa at Turner Farm among the various
levels at the Turner Farm. But one fact stands
out. The relative amount of clam shell to vertebrate
bone is higher in the Late Archaic level than in the
Ceramic levels (Spiess and Lewis 2001:149). In
fact, the evidence indicates that clams were twice
as important to the Late Archaic Moorehead phase
bulk samples taken from various layers. All occupations
at the site are multi-seasonal, including cold
and warm season, and perhaps at some times the site
had people living on it year-round.
In the excavated area of the Turner Farm site,
Occupation 2 or Moorehead phase Late Archaic
inhabitants left the shells of about 1 million clams.
Occupation 3 or Susquehanna tradition inhabitants
left the shells of about 800,000 clams. All of the
Ceramic or Woodland period occupations left the
shells of 6 million clams. (We have individual clam
counts but not weights for this site.) The site has
been partially eroded, so these are underestimates of
total harvest. Based on the stratigraphy and horizontal
distribution patterns of the site (Bourque 1995),
the Late Archaic and Susquehanna tradition layers
were probably preserved mostly in the excavated
area. The unexcavated volume of the site is probably
Ceramic period in age. As speculation, if the excavation
left 50% to 60% of the volume of the Ceramic
period deposit unexcavated, then 12 to 15 million
clams were harvested over roughly 2500 years, or a
long-term average of 6000 clams/year.
Relative Protein Contributions of Shellfish and
Vertebrates
We are sure that shellfish, primarily Mya or softshell
clam, were an important component of coastal
diet. The dietary contribution was for protein, not
fat or carbohydrate. For vertebrate bone and meat
weights, we use data on total bone weight and body
mass from specimens in the Maine Historic Preservation
Commission comparative faunal collection.
For example, a deer of dressed weight 79 kg has a
total bone weight of 5.9 kg, and a Gadid (fish, cod
family) of 1.7 kg dressed weight has a total bone
weight of 0.31 kg. (see Spiess et al. 2006:181:table
16 for data and discussion). Converting bone weight
to dressed (meat, fat, skin, and bone weight) is comparatively
straightforward.
Returning to the Indiantown Island data, the
detailed analysis (Spiess et al. 2006) of that site
produced good estimates of total clam-shell weight
and fish, mammal, and bird bone weight from the
excavated area, again of Middle Ceramic period age.
There was no hint that fish, mammal, or bird bone
was being differentially discarded. For example cod
fish head bones and vertebra were all abundant in the
site, so the cod heads were not being lopped off and
thrown into the ocean. (In fact, they were most likely
being made into soup.) Likewise, with the exception
of moose (Alces alces), whose distal limb bones are
slightly over-represented, the parts of mammal skeletons
appear on site without bias of skeletal element.
Table 1. Relative contribution to the protein portion of the diet of
major classes of fauna from the excavated area of the Indiantown
Island site. See Spiess et al. (2006) for further information. Correction
factor = bone or shell to meat weight.
Total bone Total Percentage
or shell Correction meat meat
weight (kg) factor: contribution contribution
Mammal 12.47 1:15 187.0 2.1%
Bird 0.47 1:20 9.4 0.1%
Fish 11.79 1:50 589.6 6.6%
Clam 14,895.00 100:55 8129.0 91.2%
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coast, consumption of the stored, dried clams would
have been spread out over the year. In opposition,
we have the data from the summer Kidder Point site
in upper Penobscot Bay with a similar overload of
clam protein compared to vertebrate protein. One
logical answer to this seeming conundrum would be
coastal-interior trade in dried and smoked shellfish
meat, but again there is no ethnographic evidence for
such trade.
Conclusion
Clams and other shellfish were not just an
emergency food; rather, they appear to have been
a primary source of protein in the diet of coastal
Archaic and Ceramic period people around the Gulf
of Maine. At a few sites where we can quantify this
contribution, clams supplied 90% of the protein,
although most of the data come from 2 relatively
short-term, seasonal occupations (Indiantown
Island, winter to early spring; Kidder Point, summer).
Moreover, clams were relatively less important
during the Ceramic period than they had been
during the Late Archaic, compared to vertebrates
(fish, mammals, birds) at least at the Turner Farm.
Fish, mammals, and birds were, however, undoubtedly
supplying the majority of the calories in the
coastal diet in the form of fat.
It is time to rethink some of our assumptions about
coastal life around the Gulf of Maine, including what
factors were driving local and regional settlement
patterns. At least during the Ceramic period, some of
the population was resident on the coast year-round
(multi-seasonally). The importance of the clam (and
other shellfish) to the diet must have had an effect on
coastal settlement pattern, balanced by the potential
for over-harvest of clam flats accessible by canoe.
The importance of clams in the diet might have controlled
both the size, duration, and intensity of coastal
settlement, with clam flats acting as a settlement attractor,
and rate of clam harvest acting as a limit to
settlement concentration, or dispersor.
Literature Cited
Asch Sidell, N. 1999. Prehistoric plant use in Maine: Paleoindian
to Contact Period. Pp. 191–223, In J.P. Hart
(Ed.). Current Northeast Paleoethnobotany, New York
State Museum Bulletin 494, Albany, NY, USA.
Belknap, D.F., R.C. Shipp, R. Stuckenrath, J.T. Kelley,
and H.W. Borns Jr. 1989. Holocene sea-level change
in coastal Maine. Pp. 85–105, In W.A. Anderson and
H.W. Borns Jr. (Eds.). Neotectonics of Maine: Studies
in Seismicity, Crustal Warping, and Sea-Level
Change. Bulletin 40, Maine Geological Survey, Augusta,
ME, USA.
diet than they were in the Ceramic period diet at
this site, compared with vertebrate meat. To say
that another way, the relative contribution of clams
to the diet was apparently decreased from the Late
Archaic to the Ceramic period. For one thing, these
data completely destroy any hypothesis (ca. 1980)
focusing on how coastal Indians learned to harvest
clams efficiently only during the Ceramic or Woodland
period, and how the importance of the shellfish
increased dramatically during the Ceramic period.
Discussion
There are, of course, many assumptions and
considerations herein. We could assume that some
of the clams were being used to bait cod fish hooks
at Indiantown Island, a likely assumption based on
ethnographic accounts. Still, one does not use 8000
kg of clam meat to catch 12 kg of cod. Since there is
little or no evidence of differential discard of vertebrate
body parts on or off site, so no way to get rid
of evidence of vertebrate catch, how do we interpret
these data? Moreover, in non-agricultural societies
along the Maine coast, the mammals, birds, and
fish were supplying the vast majority of the fat and
calories in the diet (with a possible exception of nuts
and some wild plants). However, it seems that clams
were supplying the bulk of the protein, and therefore
clams had to have been a critical resource.
Ethnographic accounts from Maine and the Canadian
Maritime provinces record Indians storing
seal oil in bladders. One recorded use of that oil was
to add it to meals (Denys 1908 [1672]:253, 350),
much as we dip steamed clams or lobster in butter
today. Thus, the shellfish protein is recorded in ethnographic
accounts as a primary diet item, supplemented
with fat.
There are a few accounts of Indians on the coast
of Maine specifically smoking or drying shellfish
for storage, transport, and later use. For example,
in 1786, five canoes of Penobscots were observed
returning from the coast to the Indian Island area
(up the Penobscot River, near Bangor) with “some
pots and kettles full of boiled clams” and “parched
clams stuck on long sticks like candlerods” (Little
1786:79). However, Black and Whitehead (1988)
have proposed that such drying and storage was a
major factor driving the harvest of shellfish, based
on their work on the New Brunswick coast. The
ethnographic record of the Gulf of Maine certainly
does not include accounts of the amount of shellfish
(or fish, for that matter) drying and storage that went
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