Mollusk Collection

The Zooarchaeology Lab's mollusk collection consists of nearly 470 specimens representing 82 different shell species.

 

Pacific Littleneck Clam

The mollusk collection began in the late 1960s as an ad-hoc assortment of specimens as a means of understanding shell artifacts from California archaeological assemblages. In the early 2000s graduate student Michael Kennedy increased the collection considerably with his research on prehistoric shellfish consumption at sites near Bodega Bay.