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Part I, “The Settings,” invites readers to get to know and familiarize themselves with Seri culture, language, and territory. In addition, Part I offers a brief section on the author’s background, information resources and data, Seri traditional knowledge, and technical notes. Part II, “Mollusks in the Seri Culture,” is perhaps the most robust in terms of how the information is synthesized and presented. Here, the reader plunges directly into Seri ethnomalacology thanks to the vivid description of numerous biocultural roles that mollusks play within Seri culture. Starting with a brief explanation of the Seri way of naming living kinds, Moser Marlett makes it clear that many of the taxonomic categories are covert and that Seri do not name mollusks as a single taxonomic unit. The most valuable asset of this section is, without question, the intimate understanding of Seri ways of naming. Seri ethnotaxonomies may not be very descriptive or structured, but are full of remarkably sharp ethological descriptions. When the reader becomes aware that hant quixooa [what plans to fight] is the Seri name for hermit crabs, he can only marvel on the profound ecological and intra-specific observations behind such a name. Part II deals with taxonomy and anatomy and subtly incorporates daily life aspects—mythology and folklore, magical practices and mortuary rituals, medicine, food, material culture, trade and commerce, and place names—in which mollusks play a part in Seri life. It is a thorough and comprehensive section, yet also an easy to follow ethnography. Part III, “Species Accounts,” is perhaps the most attractive and conspicuous section. Illustrated with many pictures and remarkable drawings, most of which are the author’s work, the section groups all of the mollusks known by the Seri into classes— Bivalvia, Gastropoda, Polyplacophora, Scaphoda, and Cephalopoda—then discusses the ethnomalacology of each of the species included in every class. The The oceans have played a vital role in sustaining human communities since the pre-neolithic era (Marean et al. 2007). Currently, global annual consumption of seafood amounts to an impressive 107 million tons a year (Laurenti 2007). Humans have also used marine biota as a source of weapons, tools, adhesives, tanning materials, pigments, adornment, musical instruments, recreation supplies, storage items, shelter, fuel, and medicines (Narchi 2011). There are few societies in the Americas in which marine ethnobiological knowledge is as vibrant and self-evident as that of the Seri people of coastal Sonora, Mexico. The Seri are the southernmost nomadic hunter-gatherer and fishing society in North America. Having roamed much of the Midriff Island area of the Sonoran Desert for at least 2000 years, their culture is characterized by a seafaring tradition, an extensive use of marine resources, and an overall reservoir of ethnobiological knowledge not commonly found in hunter-gatherer literature.

ethnobiology letters

Shells on a Desert Shore: Mollusks in the Seri World. By Cathy Moser Marlett. 2014. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 304 pp. $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8165-3068-7.