63 



Similar shell heaps are known to occur in a number of places in Indi- 

 ana, though but few if any of them have been thoroughly investigated. 

 Along the Ohio River in Clark County tliero is one near the mouth of 

 t'ourteen-niile Creek and another two miles east of New Washington. The 

 large ohe foraierly at Clarksville, just below Jeffersonville, has been mostly 

 eroded away by the stream. Others occur on the banks of the Ohio in 

 Perry and Posey Counties. On a high bluff just below New Harmony there 

 is a large kitchen-midden, and also another on the Wabash near Merom, 

 Sullivan County. 



All of these Indiana refuse heaps are composed mainly of the shells 

 of Unio, and show that that mollusc once formed an important element 

 In the food supply of an ancient people. The larger number of Unios in 

 our streams have in recent years been removed to furnish ornaments, not 

 food, for the over-civilized white man. It might be well for him to culti- 

 vate a taste for these fresh water clams and so add another variety of 

 food to his menu, thereby reducing in .slight degree the high cost of living 

 of which he now so much complains. I do not know, however, that I 

 would advise him to try any of those (if any there be) in the West Fork 

 of White River between Indianapolis and Martinsville. 



Shell mounds or kitcheji-middens of marine shells, some of them of 

 great size, occur frequently along the Atlantic coast and are especially 

 numerous in Florida. They have not as yet received the close attention 

 from archaeologists that those of Europe have had. A thorough study of 

 tliem would, without doubt, disclose many i>oints of interest regarding the 

 food habits and domestic life of our prehistoric races. 



It was from one of these refuse heaps. 1.1 8!i feet in length and with an 

 average width of 100 feet, located near Ormond, Florida, that, in 1899 1 

 secured the bones of the Great Auk. and so extended the known range of 

 that now extinct marine bird more than 1.100 miles. 



