Indigenous people farmed oysters sustainably for 5000 years

4 May 2022
/Matilda Handsley-Davis

Archaeological study’s findings hold lessons for today’s conservation efforts.

A new archaeological study has unearthed evidence Indigenous people in Australia and North America sustainably managed and consumed oysters for thousands of years.

Oysters are a popular food source for many communities around the world, yet populations of wild oyster species have crashed in regions of both Australia and the United States since European colonisation. It’s estimated that up to 85% of 19th century oyster reef areas have been lost, through a combination of commercial over-exploitation, habitat changes, and the spread of diseases and introduced species.

Now, a large international team of archaeologists and anthropologists has compiled evidence stretching back thousands of years to understand how these resources were managed before European colonisation. The team was led by Torben Rick of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and Leslie Reeder-Myers of Temple University, both in the US, and included members of some First Nations groups from the areas studied.

“Oyster harvesting didn’t start 500 years ago with the arrival of Europeans,” explains study co-author Bonnie Newsom, an anthropologist at the University of Maine, US, and citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. “Indigenous peoples had a relationship with and understood this species well enough to use it as part of their subsistence and cultural practices.”

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An eroding archaeological site on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Sites like this contain massive quantities of oysters harvested over 1,000 years ago. The dense accumulation of oysters are all archaeological oysters dated to over a millennium ago, with intact deposits lying underneath the marsh to the right. Credit: Torben Rick.

More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/indigenous-oysters-farming/