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NEWS ARCHIVE
LAST ARCHAEOMALACOLOGY WORKING GROUP MEETING
The last ICAZ Archaeomalacology Working Group meeting was organised by Esteban Álvarez-Fernández and Diana Carvajal Contreras, and held at the Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria, Unidad Asociada al CSIC, Santander, Spain. For more information on the meeting, visit our dedicated page here.
ARCHAEOMALACOLOGY SESSION: ICAZ MEXICO CITY 2006
Reported by Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Working group liaison. The archaeomalacology working group decided during its initial business meeting in Florida, in February of 2005 to meet every other year, alternating between a session within the general ICAZ meeting and an independent meeting elsewhere.
During the recent ICAZ meeting in Mexico City due to logistical reasons our session was split into two parts on different days. The session was very variable and included 10 oral presentations and two posters. The topics varied from oyster cultivation to the production and exchange of shell artifacts; from paleoenvironmental reconstruction and dating of mollusks to their dietary significance in an island society as well as shell symbolism. (The abstracts are available on the Bone Commons website). A wide chronological and geographical ranges were represented, and all papers were stimulating contributions for future research.
In our previous meeting the group welcomed a contribution of sea urchins, while this time we included a study on Ostracode Paleoecology. Being the only working group dedicated to invertebrates, we are open to include such studies and benefit from them.
In addition to the archaeomalacology session, there was a session dedicated to Mollusks of Precolumbian Mexico. Withn the entire conference there were about 30 papers and posters that discussed mollusks in various contexts, many of them within the session on Exploitation of Coastal Resources but also elsewhere.
A business meeting was carried out dedicated primarily to discuss the publication of the proceedings and to our next meeting. Canan Cakirlar and Victoria Stossel agreed to undertake the editing and publishing of the proceedings of the Archaeomalacology and the Mollusks of Precolumbian Mexico sessions in one volume.
FIRST INTERNATIONAL SCLEROCHRONLOGY CONFERENCE
The First International Sclerochronlogy conference will be held from 17-21 July 2007 in St Petersburg, Florida.The conference themes include such topics as biomineralization and vital effects, methodological state-of-the-art, modeling and statistical analyses, and the diverse applications of these techniques. The conference themes will provide a strong foundation upon which to establish and enhance lines of communication and to build collaborations that will be a springboard for future research. The meeting format, a single forum with no concurrent sessions, has been chosen to maximize opportunities for interaction. Thus, the number of oral presentations will be limited, although poster presentations are welcome and will be emphasized in their own session. Those presentations focusing on cutting edge methodologies, technologies, and applications will be featured in the oral sessions.
Registration: Register by Friday, March 16, 2007 to receive the Early REDUCED Fee! The registration fee includes the program and other printed materials, conference t-shirt, bag and padfolio, daily continental breakfast, Tuesday early bird social, Wednesday welcome reception, Thursday poster session social, and the Saturday awards luncheon. Register anytime before Friday, March 16, 2007 to receive the Early REDUCED registration fee of only $350. Students can register anytime before Friday, March 16, 2007 for only $150 (note: a copy of your student ID must be faxed to 352-392-9734 in order to qualify for the Early student registration fee). To register, go to the conference web site and click on the box "Register Now" and follow the instructions posted there. You can register online and pay with a credit card or check, or generate an invoice for submission to your agency for payment.
Call for Abstracts: Individuals are invited to submit abstracts on all aspects of sclerochronology including, but not limited to: biomineralization, growth increment formation, vital effects, visualization and sampling methods, modeling and statistical analyses, applications to marine, non-marine, climatological, paleontological, and archaeological systems, as well as general and historical aspects of sclerochronology. Abstract submissions will be used to select oral presentations, and ALL abstracts, both oral and poster, will be published in the conference book of abstracts. Abstracts will also be posted on the Sclerochronology website following the conference. If you wish to make an oral presentation or present a poster, please submit an abstract no later than* March 15, 2007*. Abstracts MUST be submitted ONLINE via the conference web site
WORLD CONGRESS OF MALACOLOGY - UPCOMING CONFERENCE
The next World Congress of Malacology is coming up in July 2007 (15th - 20th) in Antwerp, Belgium. The Congress is now open for contributions. Please see the attached circular for further details.
DE NEDERLANDSE ZOETWATER MOLLUSKEN
The book De Nederlanse Zoetwater Mollusken (The Freshwater Molluscs of the Netherlands) is available now. Although the text is in Dutch, it is at present the best handbook for identification of and information about this group in northwest Europe.
The book can be ordered online at http://www.knnvuitgeverij.nl/www2/indexUK.htm
LANDSNAILS AS FOOD: PAST AND PRESENT Colloquium for the next UISPP, Lisbon, 2006 David Lubell, at the University of Alberta, is organising this upcoming colloquium. Those interested in participating should contact him directly at dlubell@ualberta.ca or by snail mail at: David Lubell, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2H4, Canada. The colloquium abstract is as follows:
Land
snails are a frequent, often abundant, component in a few Late Pleistocene
and in hundreds of early to mid-Holocene archaeological deposits throughout the
circum-Mediterranean region. The
most spectacular examples are the Capsian escargotières of eastern Algeria and
southern Tunisia, but archaeological sites containing abundant land snail shells
that represent food debris are known from Cantabria, the Pyrenees, southern
France, Italy, southeastern Europe including the Balkans, Cyprus and the Levant,
the Zagros region, Ukraine and Cyrenaica.
Outside
the Mediterranean area the occurrence of land snails as food debris in
archaeological deposits is less common, but nonetheless present in a number of
regions, including Brazil, Peru, Texas, the Caribbean, East Africa, Nigeria and
Sudan. There is also evidence for past and modern use of amphibious
fresh water snails as food amongst the Maya, while fresh water snails are known
from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in several regions of China
What
is the significance of land snails as prehistoric food?
Do they represent a signature for the period just prior to the adoption
of food producing economies? Were
they a starvation food or are they evidence of feasting?
Were they, in some cases, domesticated?
What is the nutritional contribution of land snails to prehistoric and
ethnographically documented diets?
These
are all questions that remain to be answered, and it will be the goal of this
colloquium to bring together a group of interested scholars to develop means to
answer them.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN BIOLOGICAL STATION MINI-COURSES This (US) Spring, the University of Michigan Biological Station are running non-credit adult mini-courses. Included within the programme is a course offered by Dr John B. Burch on 'Mollusks of Northern Michigan'. The course runs from June 9-13th. For those interested in more information, please follow the link.
SYMPOSIUM IN HONOUR OF VOJEN LOŽEK 25-28 July 2005, Prague A symposium is being organised in honour of Voken Ložek, who is the most important European Quaternary malacologist of the second half of the twentienth century. The syposium is entitled: Molluscs, Quaternary stratigraphy, faunal changes and environmental dynamics Proceedings will be published. For more information, please contact Professor Ivan Horáček, Department of Zoology, Charles University, Viničná 7, CZ 128 44 Praha, Czech Republic. Phone: 00420 221951851 Fax: 00420 221951841
NEW MEMBER PROFILE: MARCELA LUCERO JUEZ Despite the many references in ethnographies to shell artefacts in Chile, Marcela is one of very few archaeomalacologists actively studying shells as tools in her country. She comments that shell artefacts are often placed under the 'miscellaneous' section of reports and there is generally no systematic approach to their analysis. Marcella's dissertation work comprises an evaluation of the use of shell artefacts in the early settlement of the semi-arid region of Chile (c. 10,000 BP, Complejo Cultural Huentelauquén). Given assumptions regarding the coastal adaptations of the Complejo Cultural Huentetauquén, Marcela hypothesised that a range of shell tools - including both expedient and curated forms - should have been utilised. Her methodological approach is based on protocols more commonly seen with lithic analysis, but adapted to the peculiarities of shell as a raw material. So far, she has conducted experimental work using Mytilus edulis, Venus antiqua, Mesodesma donacium and Concholepas concholepas to examine their potential as expedient tools on different materials, and in different states. Examine of microwear will then set a baseline for interpreting archaeological specimens. Taphonomic concerns have also been factored into this methodology. For a rundown of Marcela's work more generally, refer to the South America page, and for a selection of her publications please see the publications page.
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