The temporality of shell-bearing landscapes at Crystal River, Florida

•We consider shell bearing sites from the perspectives of landscape and temporality.•We describe investigations at the Crystal River and Roberts Island sites in the American Southeast.•We present four phases of midden formation based on Bayesian modeling of 24 new radiocarbon dates.•We identify rates of midden accumulation for each phase.

We employ a landscape perspective to the shell middens at Crystal River (8CI1) and Roberts Island (8CI41), Woodland period (ca. 1000 BC to AD 1000) mound centers on the west-central coast of Florida in the American Southeast. Specifically, we adopt Ingold’s (1993: 162) understanding of landscape as the physical incorporation of social life, with all of its complexities of temporality and movement. Mapping, geophysical survey, and coring were used to document the location and scale of the contemporary and ancient landscapes. We followed this with small scale excavations to understand the form and timing of midden deposition. We employ Bayesian chronological modeling of radiocarbon dates from our investigations in the middens at Crystal River and Roberts Island to identify the broader rhythms of human activities. To characterize finer rhythms of social life within these phases, we compare rates of midden accumulation and other quantitative and qualitative measures of the distributions of artifacts and sediments. Our results indicate that the shell-bearing landscape at Crystal River and Roberts Island incorporates activities that fall in four broad phases over the interval from around AD 150 to 1050. These phases are characterized by diverse activities and temporalities, including both repetitive, small-scale refuse disposal and temporally discrete, larger-scale depositional episodes. Consistent with recent work on shell midden variability, both the archaeological deposits and the activities they encapsulate blur the lines between midden and monument.