Bonding together the pasts: the shell mounds management in Brazil

"In Obidos, there is a huge sambaqui in an island that borders the city called Itanduya, and [some informant says] that all the lime used in the building of the Fortress of Obidos came from a sambaqui located in a place called Mondongo".

Charles Hartt, 1885.

Tempus edax, homo edacior, "Time is hunger, men are even more"

During more than two hundred years many sambaqui owners extracted a great part of the sambaqui, in order to do “all the necessary lime to the Sao Francisco do Sul village” and to many sites on that coast.

Comte de la Hure, 1885.

“From those shells of the mussels that the indians ate, they have done all the lime of the buildings of this Captaincy since its foundation and hitherto. And later the mounds of oysters of Santos, Sao Vicente, Conceicao, Iguape and Cananea will finish.”

Gaspar da Madre de Deus, 1797.​

Prior, the natural Indians came to the see because of the oysters. They took so many of them that they left behind mounds of shells, and the nucleus, they took in order to eat during the year and over those mounds, long the years, large and big trees grown and the Portuguese found some of them and each day they find others again and from these shells thel make lime and from one single mounf they buit part of the Bahia’s school, the Government building and many others buildings and the [shell mouds] are not extinct yet.

Fernando Cardim, late 16^th century.