| Summary: | <p class="Default">Land snail shell is a material commonly identified in the Late Holocene archaeological record of eastern Africa. Typically, archaeologists designate land snail shell as a natural occurrence or as debris produced from human subsistence. Ethnographic observations in lowland northeastern Tanzania show that contemporary communities employ the soft parts and shells of land snails, particularly <em>Achatina fulica</em>, for a range of everyday and special purposes. The array of land snail uses by mixed subsistence farmers and agropastoralists in the area documents the significance of <em>A. fulica</em> and other robust land snail species. Present uses of land snails observed in Tanzania offer a set of analogies that, when critically applied, can enrich archaeologists’ interpretations of land snail debris in antiquity.</p>
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