Shells shells everywhere - except where you need them

The last few weeks have been a flurry of activity on many fronts - some related to my project and some the usual administrative dross that surfaces with alarming regularity. With such a large and multifaceted project, the initial organisation is one of the biggest challenges. What equipment is most appropriate to use? Where is it based? How much does it cost? What order do I need to run experiments in? But first, and most importantly at this stage, is 'where are all these shells coming from?' When several hundred specimens of a range of species are required, things can get challenging....

So, I've got a list of 12 species pegged for experimental research. These shells made it into the hit parade by virtue of being either a known or suspected raw material for artefact production in the Asia-Pacific region. Apart from that commonality, they're a bit of a motley list, with some being commercially raised in various aquaculture ventures, some being obscure and not very easy to collect, and others being common in particular tropical locations but of little commercial value so not so easily obtainable if you don't live in the tropics. If you can help me get specimens of any of these shells, I would be forever in your debt!!! Allow me to introduce you to the shell posse:



Commercial Topshell
Trochus niloticus (Family Trochidae)
This shell is used extensively in the Pacific Islands from around 4000 years ago for making fishhooks, bangles and other sundry items. In recent times, it's best known for being the major species used for making mother-of-pearl buttons. It's raised commercially in small-scale ventures, frequently in collaboration with various indigenous communities. Given the small-scale nature of farming, though, it's a bit hard to get information on where to source several hundred specimens. The hunt continues!


Pearl oysters (yes, the ones they use for culturing pearls)
Pinctada maxima and/or Pinctada margaritifera (Family Pteriidae)
These beasties are cultivated in their thousands for pearling ventures, and thankfully for me I live in Australia! The nice people at Clipper Pearls in Broome, Western Australia, are selling a bunch of pearl oysters on to me for smashing and burning. They even sell them in size/quality grades with a fantastic category called "dead/wormy". In the spirit of being realistic about available raw materials in prehistory, I'm getting extra quantities of the dead/wormy!





Large Green Snail
Turbo marmoratus (Family Turbinidae)
These shells are true monsters of the 'cat's eye' family. The shell itself is often over 20cm across, and the 'cat's eye' can weigh half a kilogram. Both the shell and the cat's eye (properly called the operculum) were being used over 30,000 years ago in Indonesia for making various tools and artefacts, and bits of these shells often turn up in sites from across the Philippines, Indonesia and the islands of the western Pacific. In recent years, there's been an attempt to farm these shells, but as with Trochus niloticus above, ventures are often small-scale local affairs, and tracking down who to talk to is proving challenging....


Large spotted Coneshells
Conus litteratus and/or Conus leopardus
Cone shells are the proverbial bread-and-butter of Pacific Island shell artefact production. There are about 400 species that can be found on Indo-Pacific tropical reefs and winding their way through seagrass beds, but the mantra for selecting coneshells for artefact production seems to be "the spottier the better". Only a handful of species are patterned with spots, but these are the ones that consistently turn up in archaeological sites. The two biggest 'spotty species' are the two listed here, and they're used for making bangles, pendants and small adzes. These species are far and away the most common shells used for artefact production from around 3,500 years ago, but we don't know a great deal about their history of use before this date. Cones are not commercially farmed (they're poisonous to a greater or lesser degree depending on species), but are a favourite of shell collectors, so are readily supplied (albeit not cheaply) through specimen dealers.


Star-shaped limpet
Patella flexuosa (Family Patellidae)
This unassuming (and some of the unenlightened would say unexciting) wee limpet is destined for greatness. You heard it here first. Apart from being consumed in great quantities in eastern Indonesia 30,000 years ago, they were also used as scraping tools. Ancient vegetable peelers perhaps? This research seeks to reveal the secret life of Patella flexuosa filled with mystery, intrigue, and close encounters with yams ... Of little commercial value and interest - to either aquaculture ventures or specimen dealers - getting hold of a few hundred of these is presently a little daunting.


Globose Dog Whelk and/or Black Dog Whelk
Nassarius globusus and/or Nassarius pullus (Family Nassariidae)
These little scavengers are often referred to as 'nassa' shells, but as Nassa is a genus name in a completely different whelk family, I'm obstinately refusing to call these nassa shells to avoid scientific confusion. These shells are often strung in great numbers in places like New Guinea today, and small beads are produced in dog whelks all over the globe at different dates. Indeed, the oldest shell beads in the world (74,000 years old from South Africa) are made of dog whelks. I've identified numbers of dog whelk beads from archaeological sites in the Philippines before, but they can be a little tricky to identify as making a bead often simply means bashing off the back with a rock. A classic case of 'how do you tell if it's an artefact or if someone just stood on it?' The answer to that is set to be revealed in the fullness of time. As with the Star-Shaped Limpet, dog whelks aren't of much interest to anyone, so getting a few hundred is a bit of a conundrum. Basically, any species (and there are lots) that have a "well-developed parietal callous" (that's the blobby shiny bit by the aperture) will do for my purposes.


Mud Mussel/Clam
Polymesoda erosa (Family Corbiculidae)
These fairly uninspiring-looking guys live in big colonies in estuaries in northern Australia, Borneo, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and elsewhere in the region where there are biggish rivers. A really important source of food in many places, there's a long record of the valves of these shells being carried around as a part of 'multi-purpose tool-kit'. There's putative evidence that, for more than 10,000 years, these shells have been used to cut, scrape, slice and dice. Who needs a ginsu knife when you have the mud mussel! In fact, I'm betting one of these could actually cut through an aluminium can. A strong shell with a naturally sharp edge, you can buy these at local markets in the right places. I do not, however, live in the right places. I'm in contact with various folks in northern Australia at the moment to see if I can order me a few hundred valves.


Violet Clam
Batissa violacea (Family Corbiculidae)
First cousin of the mud clam, the violet clam has a pretty similar range of uses and is found in archaeological sites across the Pacific Islands. It tends to live in rivers rather than on estuarine mudflats, and Fijians in particular seem to be keen on collecting and consuming these in remarkable quantities. Apparently these clams constitute around 80% of the whole fisheries catch of Fiji by weight! I'm going to be calling on some contacts in Fiji to see whether we can cut a violet clam deal: analysis traded for specimens.



Baler shell
Melo amphora and/or Melo broderipii (Family Volutidae)
Yep - they are literally used as canoe bailers as well as all other manner of things. Bits and pieces of these shells are often found in archaeological sites in northern Australia and Southeast Asia, but we don't really know very much about them. Taj Vitales from the University of the Philippines has just finished a great Masters thesis looking at baler shell artefacts from sites dating to the last 3000 years or so in the Philippines, but the dates for usage in Australia are much much earlier than this. I'll be tracking baler shells back through time. Common in some parts of northern Australia and Indonesia, they're generally sold through specimen dealers and collection is regulated in some parts of Australia.


Chambered Nautilus
Nautilus pompilius (Family Nautilidae)
Everyone knows something about nautilus shells - they're they ones that if you cut them in half there's lots of chambers winding around in a spiral. They're inhabited by tentacled creatures related to octopuses (yes, that's the grammatically correct plural of octopus), and cruise around the open ocean. Because you don't generally find them close to shore, collecting specimens is a little challenging. They tend to wash up dead, and this only commonly happens in areas where there are offshore breeding populations (eastern Indonesia, Palau, New Caledonia, parts of New Guinea etc etc). The specimen in my own collection was collected from a dugout canoe in New Guinea while we were paddling from home (one island) to work (another island). It was just bobbing away on the water's surface. While artefacts made from nautilus shell are never particularly abundant, they are found across the Island Southeast Asian and Pacific Island region, and its use as a raw material appears to stretch over several tens of thousands of years.

Giant Clams
Tridacna gigas, Tridacna maxima, Tridacna squamosa (Family Tridacnidae)
Like nautilus shells, everyone knows something about giant clams. These guys are the monsters of the mollusc world, and their attributes as raw materials were well know to people thousands of years ago. They're bashed up, sawn, ground, chipped and abraded into a variety of artefacts including adzes, chisels, bracelets and beads. Unfortuntately for me, they're also on the world-wide endangered species list (they're not really endangered, but it's politically complex terrain). This means that they're not readily obtainable. On the upside, there have been a bunch of programmes over the last 15 years or so trying to commercially raise giant clams, so like the commercial top shell and green snail, I need to track down small-scale ventures who may or may not still be cultivating these shells.


So there they are in all their splendour - my target species. If you happen to have piles of these on your doorstep, or know someone who does, I would love to hear from you and we can talk turkey. You will receive the notable award of acknowledgement in an academic paper ... your name in scientific lights!!