1.Roldan, R.D. & J.M. Bayman.2024.
Mollusk Foraging and Gendered Labor at Litekyan (Ritidian) During the Spanish Contact Period in Guam.
Micronesica.
2024-01:
1-20.
Date Revised/Accepted: 30 June 2024.
Mollusk Foraging and Gendered Labor at Litekyan (Ritidian) During the Spanish Contact Period in Guam
Roldan, R.D. & J.M. Bayman.
Archaeological excavations at a 17th century multi-building latte household in the village of Litekyan (Ritidian) in northern Guam yielded a rich assemblage of mollusk shells. Analysis of the assemblage provided new insights on gendered labor as it was enacted through the foraging, cooking, consumption, and discard of mollusk shells where the labor of men and women was spatially segregated at two adjacent and contemporaneous latte buildings. The archaeological excavation of sixteen 1 x 1 m units alongside each of the two latte buildings recovered the mollusk shell assemblages from a single stratigraphic layer. Together, the analysis of eight units from the latte household excavation yielded an aggregate of 5,052.8 g of mollusk shell and a NISP count of 2603 intact shells and shell fragments. Taxonomic identification of shell from the two latte excavations offered an opportunity to compare their respective assemblages and determine whether (or not) they aligned with the expectations of ethnographic accounts of gendered labor in coastal societies. The unexpected diversity of mollusk taxa at the men’s latte building (compared to the women’s latte building), may reflect their access to a relatively broad resource catchment through inter-island trade and travel. If so, this pattern qualifies (but does not dismantle) the worldwide ethnographic generalization that women typically dominate mollusk foraging due to its compatibility with childcare and other domestic tasks. Moreover, unless a heretofore undocumented cultural taboo required women and men to eat in separate places, mollusks were consumed and discarded at both latte by all household members (i.e., women, men, and children). These findings raise new questions and provide valuable baseline information for developing further research in the Mariana Islands.
