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40 40 f r NPS Farm 10-900-2 sa-sst United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet 0W App(MM No 1024-0018 Section number -f— Page I Indian River Narrows Cultural Resource District Associated Property Types F1.1 Name of Property Type: Shell. Middens FI.2 Description Shell middens in the Indian River region include the features, artifacts, ecofacts, and residues that built up from residential ivities of daily life. Site features are primarily of oyster rather than coquina. Of the meat (fish, fowl, reptile, amphibian and mammal) resources available to the people of the Indian River region, it seems that about 80% of the total dietary meat was provided by fish and reptile species and only about 15% from land mammals, showing that the people were highly dependent on the resources of the Indian River and shore (Milanich 1994:251). F1.3 Significance The Shell Middens in the Indian River Narrows Cultural Resource District are significant at the state level under National Register Criterion D. While very little research has been accomplished in the proposed district, these sites have the potential to address research questions concerning settlement and subsistence patterns, social organization, technology, foodways, and cultural ecology. In addition, specialized age and season of death studies of shell fish and fauna may indicate the more intricate aspects of the prehistoric cultural use of the biophysical environment. The arrival of humans on Orchid Island and the Indian River Lagoon area has severely affected their natural geomorphic and vegetative features and their animal populations over time. The earliest human presence in the area of Orchid Island and Indian River County probably occurred between 10,000-12,000 years ago. Because the evidence of the Paleoindian presence from this period is so ra<`, it is hard to determine how much of an effect these people had on the landscape. 1t known from the Paleo sites which hav c been discovered, including the one found at Vero Beach in 1913, that these earliest of inhabitants survived largely by hunting. Included among the wide variety of large and small animals hunted by these people were species of animals that have become extinct --such as the marnmoth, mastadon, horse, camel, etc. --and it has been suggested that these extinctions could be related to human hunting in conjunction with climatic change (McGoun 1993:50). Dramatic climate changes certainly had a great influence over the ways in which human activity has altered the psiviroutneut. About 10,000 years ago the and criviyonineat which had characwrized Clurida up until that lime began to change in conjunction with sea level rise. As the temperature and vegetation changed in response, human activity would have needed to adapt as well (Milanich 1994:58-59). "ince the ancicnt proplc of Florida did n_it build larr:e structurew of siosje as i:-& tjtlscr pier"ss of the %yodd. it is harden to discern their physical presence lipon the modem landscape. It is likely that the most visible, dramatic, and large- scale effects of prehistoric Indian populations upon in this area were planned bumings of groundcover and the