Shell ring

Shell rings have been reported in several countries, including Colombia, Peru, Japan, and the southeastern United States.

Across what is now the southeastern United States, starting around 4000 BCE, people exploited wetland resources, creating large shell middens.

Middens developed along rivers, but there is limited evidence of Archaic peoples along coastlines prior to 3000 BCE.

These shell rings are numerous in South Carolina and Georgia, but are also found scattered around the Florida peninsula.

Sites such as Horr's Island, in southwest Florida, supported sizable mound-building communities year-round.

Archaeologists have debated whether the shell rings resulted from the simple accumulation of middens in conjunction with circular villages, or if they were deliberately built as monuments.

The start of mound building in the lower Mississippi River valley and in Florida by about 6000 years ago is cited as increasing the plausibility that the shell-rings were also monumental architecture.

[3] Sites in Colombia, Peru, and Japan, as well as in the southeastern United States, have been identified as shell rings.

The first written accounts of shell rings in South Carolina and Georgia appeared early in the 19th century.

[Note 1] Archaeologists have continued to identify and investigate additional shell ring sites into the 21st century.

Rings have been impacted by rising sea levels, erosion, plowing, and coastal development.

Over the years archaeologists and others have proposed many uses for shell rings, including recreational ("gaming arenas"), ceremonial, "houses of state", astronomical observatories, religious, torture chambers, and fish traps.

The evidence of the shell rings for residential vs. ceremonial origins in the United States is mixed.

[15] Jadrnicek proposed an odorous order theory regarding shell ring formation November 2019.

Rotation of feasts occurred around a central access point usually a tidal stream leading to a circular form to the wastes deposited.

Geophysical surveys showing intermittent deposition and pit formation under and in the interior of shell rings supports the theory [16] Although the large size of shell middens gives the impression that the people associated with them lived primarily on shellfish, careful excavation of middens has revealed large quantities of fish bones, indicating that the people obtained more of their protein and calories from small fish than from shellfish.