Middens and moderns: Shellfishing and the Middle Stone Age of the Western Cape, South Africa

This paper describes some evidence of shellfish gathering from what are arguably among the earliest shell middens in human history. What makes this evidence interesting for scientists involved in explaining human evolutionary events is the fact that it may register a key moment in the emergence of our species. I describe the sites, list some of the archaeological remains, and speculate on the relationship between the evidence for systematic shellfish gathering and the appearance of hominid fossils that almost all palaeoanthropologists would call 'modern'. I have this word in inverted commas because I believe all our definitions of 'modern behaviour', and perhaps even 'modern humans', are self-serving and in need of substantial unpacking. Cynically, modern behaviour is defined as likely to be reflected in the kinds of archaeological remains (worked bone, some or other complex subsistence activity, marked ochre, burial) that we have in hand. It may be better to ask a less loaded question such as what is the history of one of these component behaviours, such as inter-tidal marine food acquisition. The gathering of sessile molluscs is, at first sight, hardly complex, but its nutritional advantages and correlates in the archaeological record might be of considerable significance