HMAP

One of the most emblematic species of the Caribbean region is the Queen Conch, Strombus gigas. This species has been exploited by humans for at least 1,500 years at the Los Roques Archipielago, where impressive accumulations of empty shells can be observed. The Queen Conch constitutes one work case of the EHIM project.

The goals of this project are to integrate, standardize and synthesize the data on early human impact on marine molluscs in a global perspective. This project argues that sustained efforts of interdisciplinary teams that may fully address mollusc exploitation in a historical perspective will allow formulating new hypotheses, generating explanatory models and provide independent means to test and assess generalizations about the status of natural populations of molluscs before, during and after the long standing prehistoric harvesting.

Products:

EHIM Workshop 2005.

Goals: to present and discuss the advances of the knowledge in multidisciplinary areas or expertise (archaeology, anthropology, paleoclimatology, mollusc biology and resource exploitation), building a multidisciplinary and global perspective on the effects of the human and environmental impact on the marine mollusk resources along the Holocene, during the last 10,000 years, in different parts of the world (Japan, Australia, New Guinea, India, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Panama, USA, Canada, Denmark, England and Israel). Proceedings in press at the British Archaeological Report Series (Archaeopress, Oxford).

HMID (Human/Molluscs Interaction Database):

Interactive database, consisting of a WWW-available, WIKI, peer-reviewed, professionally maintained, free public accessed, worldwide referenced and comprehensive database, containing high quality historical data, descriptions and interpretations of worldwide events, patterns, processes, and products resulting from the interactions between humans and mollusks through time.