Coastal shell middens in Florida: A view from the Archaic period

Current models generally place the appearance of shell middens along Florida’s coasts after 5000 B.P. This paper argues that substantial shellfishing began at least two millennia earlier. It reviews information on the earliest shell middens known in coastal Florida and traces their evolution through the Archaic period (10,000–3000 B.P.) in three areas: 1) the panhandle; 2) the northeast, and 3) southwestern Florida. In the panhandle, estuarine exploitation was well established by 7200 B.P. The subsistence base included minor but consistent amounts of freshwater and terrestrial resources throughout the Archaic. On the northeast Florida coast, midden contents demonstrate that a range of terrestrial, estuarine, and littoral resources were being exploited by 6000 B.P. By 4500 B.P., however, this diverse subsistence base was abandoned and a more targeted estuarine focus was adopted. In southwest Florida, the earliest (ca. 7000 B.P.) coastal populations gathered shellfish, but the total subsistence regime is not clearly understood until 5000–4000 B.P., when intensive exploitation of marine shellfish and fish is recognized along the shore. By 4500 B.P. in all three regions of Florida, estuarine subsistence bases supported population nucleation and the creation of monumental architecture. By the end of the Archaic period (ca. 3500 B.P.) however, the brief venture into large-scale social works was abandoned in some, but not all of Florida, as climate and/or sea level regression brought significant environmental changes.