Land gastropod piercing during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene in the Haua Fteah, Libya

Land snail shell is a frequent constituent of archaeological sites, but it is rarely clear whether it represents food refuse, the remains of scavengers, or evidence for natural processes. Piercing of land snail shells enables the animal to be extracted from the shell and thus provides direct evidence for human consumption. We report pierced land snails from the Haua Fteah, Libya. The earliest pierced land snail shell in the Haua Fteah pre-clates the Last interglacial, while the most recent is Late-Classical in age, but the largest quantities are in layers of Late-Glacial and earliest Holocene age, where they are associated with atypical microliths which may have been used to pierce shells to enable easy extraction of the animal. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.