Qualla: Mussel Point https://qualla.com/mussel-point en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:25 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/k/6/m/0/mussel-point-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Mussel Point https://qualla.com/mussel-point Mussel Point: Introduction https://qualla.com/mussel-point/ Photo credit Andrew Hall, CC BY-SA 3.0. Somewhere beneath the surface of this windswept headland between Elands Bay and Lamberts Bay, the shells start about a meter down and do not stop. Mussel Point -- known to archaeologists as Mike Taylor's Midden -- is possibly the largest of thirteen megamiddens scattered along South Africa's Atlantic coast, a heap of discarded shells so vast it stretches 350 meters long and 200 meters wide. What looks like geology is actually biography: a record of how San hunter-gatherers lived, ate, and adapted over more than a thousand years of coastal life.

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Image: Andrew Hall | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/6/m/0/mussel-point-wp/k6m0-mussel-point-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Mussel Point: An Archive Written in Shell https://qualla.com/mussel-point/ Photo credit Andrew Hall, CC BY-SA 3.0. Megamiddens are not ordinary refuse piles. They are enormous accumulations of marine shells -- primarily mussels, but also barnacles, whelks, and limpets -- mixed with tortoise shell, fish bones, and bird remains. Thirteen of these sites dot the West Coast, but Mussel Point stand...

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Image: Andrew Hall | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/6/m/0/mussel-point-wp/k6m0-mussel-point-an-archive-written-in-shell.mp3 0:06 2 full Mussel Point: The People Who Built the Mound https://qualla.com/mussel-point/ Photo credit Andrew Hall, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 3,000 and 1,800 years ago, the San communities living along this coast faced overlapping pressures -- environmental shifts, population changes, the arrival of herding peoples from the north. The megamiddens represent their response: a sustained, intensive exploitation of ...

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Image: Andrew Hall | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/6/m/0/mussel-point-wp/k6m0-mussel-point-the-people-who-built-the-mound.mp3 0:06 3 full Mussel Point: Reading the Layers https://qualla.com/mussel-point/ Photo credit Andrew Hall, CC BY-SA 3.0. The site dates broadly from 980 to 2,800 years before present, though the densest occupation falls within a narrower band. Within those layers, archaeologists since the 1970s have recovered not just shells but evidence of broader lifeways -- the tools used to pry limpets from roc...

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Image: Andrew Hall | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/6/m/0/mussel-point-wp/k6m0-mussel-point-reading-the-layers.mp3 0:06 4 full Mussel Point: A Fragile Monument https://qualla.com/mussel-point/ Photo credit Andrew Hall, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air, Mussel Point does not announce itself the way a ruin or a monument might. The midden is subtle -- a low rise in the coastal landscape, its surface scattered with bleached fragments. But its scientific significance is outsized. As the only open-air site in the Elands...

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Image: Andrew Hall | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/6/m/0/mussel-point-wp/k6m0-mussel-point-a-fragile-monument.mp3 0:06 5 full