Shells on a Desert Shore: Mollusks in the Seri World

Edition: 
[1st ed.]
Issue Date: 
2014
Publisher: 
The University of Arizona Press
Publisher Place: 
Tucson
Sponsored By: 
Southwest Center of the University of Arizona with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Is Part Of Series: 
The Southwest Center Series; Joseph C. Wilder, ed.
Extent: 
304 pages
Description: 
Shells on a Desert Shore describes the Seri knowledge of mollusks and includes names, folklore, history, uses, and much more. Cathy Moser Marlett's research of several decades, conducted in the Seri language, builds on work begun in 1951 by her parents, Edward and Becky Moser. The language, spoken by fewer than a thousand people today, is considered endangered. Marlett presents what she has learned from Seri consultants over recent decades and also draws from her own childhood experiences while living in a Seri village. The information from the people who had lived as hunter-gatherers provides a window into a lifestyle no longer recalled from personal experience by most Seris today—and perhaps a window into the lives of other peoples who made the Gulf's shores their home. The book offers a wealth of information about Seri history, as well as species accounts of more than 150 mollusks from the Seri area on the central Gulf coast. Chapters describe how the people ate mollusks or used them medicinally, how the mollusks were named, and how their shells were used. The author provides several hundred detailed drawings and photographs, many of them archival.
Publication Status: 
Published
Country: 
Mexico
Subject Languages: 
Content Language: 
Field: 
Work Type: 
Nature of Work: 
Entry Number: 
60559