Clam Gardens bookI’m reading Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast. It’s fascinating beyond belief. Here’s what the back-of-the-book blurb says:

Pre-contact West Coast aboriginal peoples are commonly categorized in anthropological literature as hunter-gatherers. Author, coastal traveller and historical researcher Judith Williams proposes that they cultivated butter clams in a walled sea gardens that may be unique in the world.

Wow. (Were there clam gardens on Gabriola beaches?)

Here’s more from the Tyee: BC’s Garden of Eden.

Williams tells the story as a quest for something hidden in plain sight. While doing research for another project in the early 1990s, she’d learned about rock walls erected in Waiatt Bay on Quadra Island. Her sources were modern Sliammon who still harvest the butter clams grown inside those walls.

Having seen the walls, Williams began a years-long investigation. Similar walls can be found in bays and coves all over the central coast — more than 350 clam gardens in the Broughton Archipelago alone. Many are still in use, and kept in repair. Others simply mark long-abandoned village sites.

Williams tried to interest the archeologists at the B.C. Heritage Conservation Department. They told her no evidence existed for an aboriginal mariculture; the Waiatt Bay wall didn’t exist — and if it did, it was a salmon trap.

Persisting, Williams explored the central coast and found supporters as well as more walls. People who live on the central coast know about the clam gardens. [continue]

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