Culinary Tradition in Tunisia May Be More Than 7,000 Years Old

News October 10, 2024

Cantareus apertus shells with epiphragms collected from Aouled Said
Saafi 2024, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
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PROVENCE, FRANCE—Phys.org reports that 41 cooked snail shells with epiphragms have been found among more than 35,000 Sphincterochila candidissima shells in a 7,700-year-old rammadiyet, or shell mound, at the site of Kef Ezzahi in northern Tunisia. Ismail Saafi of Aix-Marseille University explained that some land snails form an epiphragm, a temporary membrane that seals the shell, to protect against water loss when the weather warms. He added that the 41 cooked shells are the earliest evidence for the human consumption of snails with epiphragms to be found in northern Africa. To understand the culinary practice, Saafi studied a modern population that collects Cantareus apertus, a snail that also produces an epiphragm, in northern Tunisia. He saw that families and groups collected snails based upon their size and taste, and only harvested them in the summer, when they burrow and create an epiphragm. The living snails were then placed in a container of ash or sawdust to preserve the epiphragm until it was time to consume them. Snails that shed their epiphragms were discarded. “The discovery confirms the antiquity and continuity of certain practices linked to culinary and cultural traditions in the exploitation of land snails, such as the extraction of the mollusk bodies after the shell has been pierced,” Saafi said. “These data give us a better understanding of the status of land snails among ancient and contemporary populations,” he concluded. To read about the effect of the Roman conquest of North Africa on an ancient city in present-day Tunisia, go to “Oliveopolis.”

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