Shell Mounds Show a Long History of Sustainable Oyster Harvests
December 26, 2018 9:07 AM   Subscribe

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.

posted by poffin boffin (17 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
I often sit out on the marshes at low tide in summer, thinking to myself how easy the living would have been before my ancestors showed up and ate everything. What we see now is a barren wasteland compared to what always was.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:24 AM on December 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


During this past year, I lived in a place where oysters were abundant. We went to the beach during weekends armed with a knife and a lemon to pick all the oysters we could eat. For Christmas, my family ate all the oysters they could that I had picked the day before.
Some decades ago, all the oysters there had disappeared, but after sustainable harvesting and farming methods were introduced, the tide has changed (hihi) and now there is an abundance of invasive Pacific oysters that need to be eaten by me and my friends to make space for the local species (and they are doing fine too).
The point is, change works. You don't have to throw your hands up in the air and give up.
posted by mumimor at 10:26 AM on December 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


Millennial-scale sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay Native American oyster fishery
Estuaries around the world are in a state of decline following decades or more of overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Oysters (Ostreidae), ecosystem engineers in many estuaries, influence water quality, construct habitat, and provide food for humans and wildlife. In North America’s Chesapeake Bay, once-thriving eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) populations have declined dramatically, making their restoration and conservation extremely challenging. Here we present data on oyster size and human harvest from Chesapeake Bay archaeological sites spanning ∼3,500 y of Native American, colonial, and historical occupation. We compare oysters from archaeological sites with Pleistocene oyster reefs that existed before human harvest, modern oyster reefs, and other records of human oyster harvest from around the world. Native American fisheries were focused on nearshore oysters and were likely harvested at a rate that was sustainable over centuries to millennia, despite changing Holocene climatic conditions and sea-level rise. These data document resilience in oyster populations under long-term Native American harvest, sea-level rise, and climate change; provide context for managing modern oyster fisheries in the Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere around the world; and demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach that can be applied broadly to other fisheries.
Save Oyster Shells
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) needs your help–and your oyster shells–to restore native oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. Donate your empty shells to CBF so we can recycle them into more oyster reefs and repopulate the Bay with more oysters. Oyster shells are literally the foundation of our reef restoration efforts!
By the way, I love the word midden. When my room was a mess--all the time, essentially--my mother would eventually tell me to "clean up this midden." And digging down (or doon, as she said) through the detritus probably did say a lot about what I ate (or drank -- misplaced teacups, mainly), how I hunted (for words all night), and the tools I used (lost books, lost notes, lost pencils). The world was my oyster.
posted by pracowity at 10:35 AM on December 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


Millennial-scale sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay Native American oyster fishery

Smithsonian Magazine has a very readable article covering this paper, How Big Were Oysters in the Chesapeake Before Colonization?

One aspect that's not touched on is how common and large the Chesapeake oyster middens are:
The dimensions of the accumulations are so remarkable that early observers were loth to admit their artificial origin. In some cases they cover areas twenty or even thirty acres in extent. On the shores of some of the Atlantic bays and rivers deposits are practically continuous for many miles and reach back from the water for distances varying from a few rods to half a mile or more, according to the nature of the ground. It is estimated that in the Maryland-Virginia area alone the oyster-shell deposits cover upward of one hundred thousand acres. The deposits are heaviest where favorable dwelling sites occur near prolific shallows or bars; it is not exceptional to find them from ten to twenty feet deep, and a depth of thirty feet has been reported in some localities. The shells in decomposing yield a dark rich soil, and where decay is well advanced the shell fields are exceedingly fertile. On many sites in recent years the shells have been calcined in kilns and employed as fertilizer. At Popes Creek, Maryland, a single midden has yielded upward of 500,000 cubic feet of oyster shells for this purpose. They are also extensively employed in some sections in building roads and in paving streets.
100,000 acres is about the same area as Washington DC plus Boston.
posted by peeedro at 11:18 AM on December 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


Interesting. A few years ago I read about how Ohlone (umbrella term for many small tribes that lived in the now SF Bay Area) communities seem to have had a negative impact on seabird populations in the Bay. Googling to find that article, I found a similar paper about what is now coastal Washington: pre-colonial human communities seem to have decreased seabird populations, or at least forced them away from the inner coast. I took the article as a rebuke to the stereotype that indigenous communities automatically lived in "balance" with nature. Humans have negatively impacted their environments in many, most? parts of the world even before colonization, mechanization, or capitalism.

Still, it's very cool to see ways human can take advantage of the abundance of our planet in a way that allows other species' to survive! So we should certainly look to all sustainable traditions that do exist as guides.
posted by latkes at 2:11 PM on December 26, 2018


If you end up near St. Michael's, MD at some point, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has a large exhibit on oysters, the history of the oystering industry on the Bay, and the oyster's importance to the water's health.
posted by delfin at 3:47 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


About shell sizes: in our spoiled conditions, we avoid big oysters, the smaller ones are tastier and there are enough of them. I don't think one can conclude anything about pre-historic middens if one doesn't include taste. Why would pre-historic people with unlimited access to good food choose lesser quality bites?
posted by mumimor at 4:10 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Crassostrea virginica is the native oyster of the Chesapeake. The virginicas grown in Puget Sound are considered best eaten raw when they are about 3" in diameter- about the size of those shells pictured in the middens.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 4:19 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's also the labor of opening the shells; insignificant when you're eating a delicacy that you're paying handsomely to have prepared and brought to your table, but maybe more important when you're relying on the oysters for subsistence and have to open them yourself without the benefit of steel tools.
posted by contraption at 5:25 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


The scale of the oyster middens described is amazing to read about. The story of the oysters reminds me of salmon in the northwest, where the resource sustained cultures over millennia. Partly it worked because population densities were lower and technology limited the ability to overharvest, but there were also practices that helped ensure sustainability.

There's also the labor of opening the shells; insignificant when you're eating a delicacy that you're paying handsomely to have prepared and brought to your table, but maybe more important when you're relying on the oysters for subsistence and have to open them yourself without the benefit of steel tools.

How do you shuck oysters without metal implements? Thin stone blades maybe?
posted by Dip Flash at 5:51 PM on December 26, 2018


I don't know how native people did it but oysters will open when cooked.
posted by peeedro at 6:23 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


The middens where I lived this fall were also hundreds of years of sediments (and more than three thousand years old), and remember, that means they didn't eat that many oysters a year. They did eat a lot. And yes flint tools are fine for opening the oysters. If you have the right take, you can do with a very simple tool, it doesn't even need to be sharp.

Fun fact: the beach near my house had a sign warning not to bathe without shoes because of the oysters. Still we plucked them from another beach with cleaner waters.
posted by mumimor at 7:18 PM on December 26, 2018


I've come across several small 19th century (I think) middens in what are now urban settings, near a river. After heavy rains, oyster shells sometimes wash out. I always thought that they were large. And yes, I did contact the local museum/archaeologists, and yes, they did know about them, and no, they didn't wish to add any more shells to their collections.
posted by carter at 4:45 AM on December 27, 2018


This reminds me of the mountain of olive oil jars in Rome.
posted by bq at 8:00 AM on December 27, 2018


From The Big Oyster - Mark Kurlansky 2006. “Apparently even back in the distant millennia, there was a tendency to harvest all of the older, larger oysters, and then when none were left, the oyster gatherers started taking younger, smaller ones. In fact, everywhere that oyster-shell middens have been studied, including Maryland and Denmark, the same phenomenon has been found: The biggest shells were on the bottom, indicating that the largest oysters were the most valued and consequently taken first.”
posted by unliteral at 1:09 PM on December 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


99% invisible did a story about the giant oyster reefs that used to line the Hudson River. They served both as a food source and a storm buffer. The oysters' utility disappeared as pollution made eating the oysters inadvisable and dredging destroyed the old parts of the reef, but they've started building reef-like structures (Living Breakwaters) outside New York City to try and insulate the city from future storms. It's striking that we can destroy something useful and not even notice for decades after.

I don't know what the line is between harvesting something that grows in the wild and "farming" it, but it makes sense to me that people whose communities depended on oysters would've known how to use them in the most sustainable and efficient ways. (And in terms of ease...man, I would definitely rather open one giant clam than 10 small ones.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 1:26 PM on December 27, 2018


I often sit out on the marshes at low tide in summer, thinking to myself how easy the living would have been before my ancestors showed up and ate everything. What we see now is a barren wasteland compared to what always was.

I am leery of the sort of “oh the noble savage lived in perfect harmony with nature” that I sometimes see from articles like these but I have also read that a lot of the reason for all the “don’t go in the woods! It’s scary! Satan lives there!” In colonial literature was the Puritan settlers would see the Natives living a life of relative ease with ample food and hunting and farming compared to hardcore depressing Protestant living and they’d tend to wander off. I mean who wouldn’t?

(Puritans, apparently, but you see my point)
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 2:39 PM on December 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


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