Clam Gardens as Coastal Landscape Agents: The Case of Shingle Point, Valdes Island, British Columbia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, mariculture has been the focus of numerous anthropological and archaeological studies across the Northwest Coast. Clam gardens (also sea gardens) were utilized by Salish peoples to provide food security, sustainability, and resilience. As elements of the built environment they also represent significant engagements with coastal landscapes. We present research that focuses on the latter element, evaluating the potential impacts that clam gardens had on coastal landscape evolution in locations where they were constructed. Our case study focuses on Shingle Point, Valdes Island, British Columbia, where a large clam garden was constructed over the last several millennia. We characterize potential changes in geomorphological and sediment transport processes resulting from its construction using a variety of methods, including sediment coring, ground penetrating radar, remote sensing, and coastal sediment transport modeling. Our objective is to consider clam gardens not just as food production features, but as large scale structuring agents of longer term coastal processes. The ultimate goal of the research is to provide a broader view of the role of clam gardens in shaping the evolution of cultural keystone places in order to support First Nations in their pursuit of future food security and food sovereignty.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36389.0