Island built from shells
Scientists revealed a tiny Fijian island was intentionally built from discarded sea shells by a community about 1,200 years ago — a midden‑engineered landform that encodes diet, craft, and social organization. The Popular Mechanics write‑up ties the shell‑island to community engineering and long‑term coastal management. (popularmechanics.com)
Researchers first recorded the feature during reconnaissance geoarchaeological surveys in January 2017 off Culasawani on the north coast of Vanua Levu, Fiji. The deposit covers roughly 3,000 m², averages 20–40 cm in thickness, is comprised of about 70–90% shell, and stands approximately 60 cm above mean high tide. Ten radiocarbon dates from the deposit cluster on a median age of 1,190 calibrated years before present (~760 CE) with a full calibrated range of 1,530–910 cal BP (420–1040 CE). Fieldwork included four 1×1‑meter test pits that recovered shell remains exclusively from edible species along with small fragments of undecorated pottery, evidence the authors used to argue for a cultural midden origin rather than a single-wave (tsunami) deposit. The article appears in the journal Geoarchaeology (DOI 10.1002/gea.70052) and names authors including Patrick D. Nunn and Frank R. Thomas alongside Fijian collaborators such as Mereia Fong‑Lomavatu and Mereoni Camailakeba. The paper records related project support from a Horizon Europe Marie Sklodowska‑Curie Actions award, listed as grant number 873207, linking the finding to broader funded research into Pacific coastal deposits.
