Reflections on 50 years of Land Snails in Archaeology

2025/01/01 by Matt Law · 1 voice
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

paper · pdf · doi:10.61733/jconch/4537

openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

When J.G. Evans’s Land Snails in Archaeology was published in 1972, it established a new understanding of the environmental history of prehistoric archaeological sites in southern Britain and in the process introduced archaeologists to the value of studying assemblages of land snail shells from archaeological deposits. This paper reflects on the impact of the book, reviews developments in the discipline over the intervening half century, and proposes some future directions for the practice of archaeological land-snail analyses.

Discussions

• Just published! A review (open access) of archaeological land snail analysis as a discipline in Britain 50(+) years after the publication of JG Evans's Land Snails in Archaeology doi.org/10.61733/jco. [bsky, 36 points, 3 comments]

Related

• From 153-year-old records to contemporary discoveries: land snail (Mollusca, Gastropoda) diversity in Penang Hill, Malaysia
• Reconstructing ancient ecological conditions from insect remains; some problems and an experimental approach
• A Late Pleistocene interglacial flora and molluscan fauna from Thatcham, Berkshire, with notes on Mollusca from the interglacial deposits at Aveley, Essex
• Late Pleistocene and Holocene coastal palaeoeconomies: A reconsideration of the molluscan evidence from northern Spain
• Among Land Snail Shells and Ashes: Geoarchaeological Analysis of the Maximiano Rockshelter, Southeast Brazil