Something I remembered beachcombing yesterday, shell middens are for looking, not digging
I took the kids beachcombing yesterday. It was high tide so there wasn’t much room to comb. But there were shell middens. Shell middens are essentially trash piles, but they are special trash piles. They are the remnants of a people’s past. Campsites, cooking, being, living. The piles of shells and other debris build up over time. A long time. The middens we saw were eroding onto the beach. The kids took shells that had already fallen out, but no digging was allowed. Why? Respect. Respect for the people. Respect for the past. Respect for those who came before us. I took some time to see if other interesting things were visible. I might have found a projectile point, but I’m not sure. Even if it was, it would still be there. Because I would have left it.
Tags: archaeology, shell middens
4 Comments
Your post was so poetic. Have any pictures of these shell middens?
I wish. It was raining so no camera. I’ll take it next time we go, though. These aren’t really impressive ones, they’ve mostly been washed away over the centuries. I did see a really cool rock feature in one section though.
[...] As a good follow-up to yesterday’s post on middens, is something that I always do when visiting a beach, I look at my feet. Huh? Well, what I mean is, I look at what kind of beach I"m standing on. Sandy? Pebbly? Rocky? I’m not going to get into examining the sand itself (though it is cool if you find a beach made up of crushed shells), but what you’re standing can tell you a lot about how the beach forms, grows, shrinks, etc. [...]
I love that.
The whole thing about respect…..thats fantastic.
Something we should all be remembering.