A team of international scientists, who have joined forces in the BivalveSPEECH project, is continuing the investigation of mussel shells from archaeological sites, combining archaeology and natural sciences. The aim is to reconstruct the historical environmental conditions and the seasonality of mussel growth in order to contribute to sustainable aquaculture management, particularly in the context of climate change.
As part of the project, Prof. Meghan Burchell, an archaeologist from Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, visited Croatia last week. In her interdisciplinary research, Prof. Burchell is analysing shells that were an important food source for ancient communities on the west coast of Canada over the last 10,000 years. As part of this project, she is involved in the geochemical (sclerochronological) study of shells from the archaeological site of Pećine u Ždrilo near Rovanjska in Zadar County.
This site is one of the rare Neolithic cave sites in the eastern Adriatic and is ideal for sclerochronological analysis due to the abundance of shells in various stratigraphic layers. The archaeological research at this site is being conducted by Prof. Dr. Sc. Daria Vujević and Mario Bodružić and their colleagues from the University of Zadar.
In addition to field research at archaeological sites, Prof. Dr. Sc. Burchell also gave lectures at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Split and at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Zadar during her stay in Croatia.
The results of this interdisciplinary research will be presented at the next International Congress of Sclerochronology, which Prof. Burchell will organise in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, in spring 2026.
The project with the full name “Bivalve Sclerochronology – Past Knowledge of Ecology and Environment for the Future Health of Coastal Ecosystems” started at the end of 2024 under the leadership of our scientist Dr. Melita Peharda Uljević and is funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.
Project page: https://galijula.izor.hr/en/projekti/hrzz_bivalvespeech/
