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Shell middens and coastal food gathering around Moreton Bay during c. 500–1500 CE

Shells, fish bones and hearth remains offer evidence of Aboriginal food gathering around Moreton Bay in southeast Queensland. This account considers c. 500–1500 CE, while distinguishing dated archaeological deposits from broader evidence of island use.

Place and period

The Medieval collection supplies a chronological category, not a description of Aboriginal society. The dates c. 500–1500 CE define this page’s focus; they do not mark the beginning or end of coastal food gathering.

A study published in 2009 describes shell and fish-bone deposits at the Lazaret Midden on Peel Island spanning approximately the preceding 1,200 years. This places part of that sequence within the requested period, but does not establish continuous occupation across the whole millennium. Ulm, Petchey and Ross.

Gathering food around the islands

Queensland Parks describes middens and shell scatters on St Helena Island as evidence of seasonal Aboriginal visits over thousands of years, involving shellfish gathering and the harvesting of dugongs and flying-foxes. This is a broad account of island use, not a dated menu for every century between 500 and 1500 CE. St Helena Island National Park.

Such evidence suggests that obtaining food involved returning to particular places and combining different resources. That is an interpretation of the reported activities, rather than a surviving timetable. The park account does not establish who performed each task, the size of gathering parties or how food was divided.

Why shells are only part of the meal

At Peel Island’s Lazaret Midden, Ross and Tomkins recovered numerous fish remains using a sieve with openings just 1 mm wide. Many fragments were too broken to identify the fish concerned. Their findings show why low fish-bone counts from coarser recovery methods cannot straightforwardly demonstrate that fishing was unimportant. Ross and Tomkins’s excavation study.

For everyday life, the cautious inference is that a shell-rich deposit need not represent a shellfish-only diet. The findings do not establish exact meal proportions, fishing equipment or a single routine shared by everyone around the bay.

Dating the evidence

Ulm, Petchey and Ross compared archaeological shell and charcoal from Peel Island and investigated local marine radiocarbon effects. Their results indicate that corrections can differ between southern Moreton Bay and the open ocean. Shell dates therefore require appropriate calibration and attention to local conditions; an uncalibrated radiocarbon age should not simply be subtracted from 1950 to produce a CE date. Marine reservoir corrections for Moreton Bay.

The evidence presented here supports a selective account of coastal food use. It does not reconstruct an unchanged daily routine throughout c. 500–1500 CE.

Sources and evidence