Oceanic Tendencies: Ritual Landscapes, Oyster Shells, and the Social Worlds of Marine Resource Exploitation in Early Medieval Britain

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Oyster shells have been discovered across multiple sites in Britain, often as part of shell middens which have been interrupted almost exclusively as food refuse. But whether inland or by the sea, people in Britain had used oysters and other molluscs to help make their religion. Oyster shells were often deposited at many Roman and early medieval ritual sites, including temples, burials, and pits, indicating a long-term and widespread use of oysters as ritual objects. At the same time, isotopic data has suggested that whilst the diets of some coastal communities were dominated by marine resources in the early medieval period, other people were less interested. This paper thus interrogates the chronology and geographic distribution of ritual oyster consumption and shell deposition within Britain at the end of the Roman period through the early medieval period. Such an approach also situates narrowly focused economic studies of marine resources and their exploitation within a rich social world of late Roman and early medieval sea environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38624.0