Reflections on 50 years of Land Snails in Archaeology

When J.G. Evans's Land Snails in Archaeology was published in 1972, it established a new understanding of the environmental history of prehistoric archaeological sites in southern Britain and in the process introduced archaeologists to the value of studying assemblages of land snail shells from archaeological deposits. This paper reflects on the impact of the book, reviews developments in the discipline over the intervening half century, and proposes some future directions for the practice of archaeological land-snail analyses.