Kasey Allely’s discussion on her personal research adventure was extremely refreshing and surprisingly one of my favourites from the semester.
Her adventure developed from a single question: Are shell mounds evidence of intensification during the Holocene? She started by travelling to the Weipa Shell Mounds where she was able to study the mounds up close, fully immersing herself in her study. She was then offered the opportunity to visit the shell mounds on a little island off the coast of Saudi Arabia, proving how research can expand as you learn more and new opportunities are made. After painstakingly sifting through shell, Allely concluded that the accumulation of the shell mounds does not equate to foraging intensity due to the fact that the shell mounds do not degrade or accumulate in a linear fashion.
What I found interesting from this discussion is how despite how much study one does into the past, it can be difficult to fully understand the going on’s of both nature and society from earlier times. What Allely or other archeologists uncover, may give us a glimpse into the past yet we must still look at many other factors. This study was Allely’s attempt to uncover how human’s past foraging and living habits had caused these shell mounds but found that what she was measuring could not be a proper indicator of human intensification. However, despite a solid conclusion to her question, she underwent a study that she thoroughly enjoyed and found out new information along the way so it would be extremely false to call her study a failure.
