Had a kid in a museum tell me about shell middens and I can't stop thinking about it

I was at the natural history museum in Denver last Saturday with my nephew. He's 10 and obsessed with some YouTube archaeologist I never heard of. He starts explaining how shell middens aren't just trash piles, they're like ancient data logs showing what people ate for 500 years straight. It hit me different because I always thought of them as just heaps of oyster shells. Do any of you look at daily artifacts differently than you were taught in school?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_anthony4d ago

Pick up on that idea about data logs because it really changes how you see everyday stuff. A pile of broken pottery or old tools is the same kind of record, just harder to read at a glance. What other common artifacts do you think we might be totally misreading?

hannah3202d ago

My grandpa was a carpenter and he always said the sawdust piles in his shop told him more about a project than the finished piece ever could. What about those weird lumps in old plaster walls you find during renovations, are those ancient repair jobs or something else entirely?