New research at Rinnukalns, a Neolithic freshwater shell midden in northern Latvia

The prehistoric shell middens of Atlantic Europe consist of marine molluscs, but the eastern Baltic did not have exploitable marine species. Here the sole recorded shell midden, at Rinnukalns in Latvia, is on an inland lake and is formed of massive dumps of freshwater shells. Recent excavations indicate that they are the product of a small number of seasonal events during the later fourth millennium BC. The thickness of the shell deposits suggests that this was a special multi-purpose residential site visited for seasonal aggregations by pottery-using hunter-gatherer communities on the northern margin of Neolithic Europe.