There tends to be a broad assumption in the literature that Danish Mesolithic middens are dominated by oysters and those of the Neolithic by cockles (Rowley-Conwy 1984). The following pie charts show that this is not the case; in fact the situation is much more complex and it is the variation in species proportion in the stratigraphic layers that is more revealing than a simple MNI count and this can give some indication of the changing use of shoreline areas through time.
Figure 4: Pie charts showing species representation MNI throughout Krabbesholm column 7737 (1=latest 17=earliest)
Layer 1 Layer 2 Layer 3 Layer 4 Layer 5 Layer 6 Layer 7 Layer 8 Layer 9 Layer 10 Layer 11 Layer 12 Layer 13 Layer 14 Layer 15 Layer 16 Layer 17Select a layer from 1 to 17.
The second Krabbesholm column 7738 came from higher up the midden (see Figure 5)
Figure 5: Photographs showing the site locations of columns 7737 and 7738 at Krabbesholm. The picture on the left is looking up the slope of the midden and the picture on the right looks down the slope (photographs taken by N. Milner)
© Internet Archaeology URL: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue22/5/quest1.html
Last updated: Tues Oct 2 2007
