Zachery Gilmore's book-length treatment of the Silver Glen shell site on the St. Johns River is strong in a number of ways, some of which mirror recent research coming from Ken Sassaman's students and much of which can be found in interpretations of shell monuments in Florida. Like most of these other authors, Gilmore relies on place making, social gathering, eventfulness, and memory to make the case that the first pottery users in the St. Johns region were intentionally building shell and sand mounds, feasting, and making history at this location. His theoretical presentation (Chapter 2) on things and events is quite strong and worthy of a class reading assignment. Among the 604 references cited, 337 (56 percent) were published since 2000. Gilmore seems particularly attracted to feminist archaeologists’ writings and theoretical works on hunter-gatherers and scholars working not only in Florida, but also in the Mississippi Valley. His favorite authors, judging from a count of sources used are Ken Sassaman (20), Asa Randall (11), Tim Pauketat (11), Mike Russo (10), and Rosemary Joyce (8).

Another strength of the research is the two chapters on Orange pottery analysis. After identifying 357 vessel lots, Gilmore marshals data on various technological attributes, surface treatments, neutron activation of clay sources and sherds, petrography, and statistics to draw conclusions about five discard contexts at Silver Glen and to document that larger, fancier, and foreign sherds were located in the two mound contexts. I applaud his decision to use NAA rather than the popular, but questionable, handheld pXRF approach. Foreign sherds may have come from southwest Florida.

Gilmore assumes that the sherds were found either where the bowl was stashed or where it was broken. That means that, for the decorated wares, the vessels were used on steep-sided shell and sand mounds. The surface area, presumably flat, on top of the two mounds was never specified, but the contour maps suggest that there was little flat area. Rather than use locations, excavations document discard locations. Quite possibly he has documented the plaza cleanings and mound depositing recorded for Mississippian platform mounds. This point raises two more quibbles I have with the “new” place/event focus advocated by Gilmore. One is that an “event” in the sense applied by Gilmore has long been addressed in archaeology, although it is now developing in interesting ways. Radiocarbon samples are, after all, derived from specific events—the death of the deer, the cutting of the tree—and microstratigraphy is event focused, particularly in the hands of Julie Stein, who advocates for the identification of facies or discrete shell dumping episodes (Deciphering a Shell Midden, 1992). Faunal analysts often strive to identify single death assemblages, particularly among invertebrates. I was surprised that Gilmore didn't make more of the numerous stratified pits, the wealth of radiocarbon dates, and microstratigraphy in the mounds in his pursuit of events. Faulting the older researcher for neglecting the individual behind events, I was also surprised that he didn't attempt to identify specific potters among the 357 vessel lots or tell us anything about who was buried below the mounds.

Shell-bearing sites have clearly moved out of the era of paleoenvironmental studies into the social, but not enough into the ritual. Gilmore described the mounds over the Mt. Taylor mortuaries as having “historical potency” and “lingering social power,” but why not spiritual power or cosmological referent? The Orange-period mounds were built atop Mt. Taylor-period mortuaries: who were those people and why were they venerated for millennia beyond their death? Why was no new mortuary established? Spiritualism is present in the shells, in sand, in bowls, in mounds, in cappings, in springs, and at lake shores, and this spiritual reference motivated these events. The spring location is particularly underappreciated, I think.

Some readers may not be comfortable with a mound of shell “gathering” unto itself things and people, but I believe that the author is exactly right to use such language. One need only marvel at the number of papers, the number of research projects, the formation of scholarly camps, and the vociferousness of their members to be a convert to this perspective. Shell-bearing sites have been magnets for much of the best scholarship in the past three decades, including this book.