Web site visitor Mal Carey writhes

Archaeological evidence indicates that about 12,000 years ago, people began migrating into areas that had once been occupied by the last great ice sheets, including the region we know today as Maine. From the middle and late 1800's up to the present time, researchers have studied places where these people left evidence of how they lived. In the coastal region of Maine, shell middens, also known as shell heaps or mounds, are one of the more common types of sites that document methods of food-gathering. Two of these middens are by far the deepest such sites on the Atlantic coast north of St. John's River in Florida (Bourque and Weddle, 1995).

For more information, see:
The Damariscotta River Oyster Shell Middens (www.maine.gov/dacf/mgs/explore/marine/sites/apr11.pdf)