Several archaeological examinations have taken place at site 35CS43 in the modern town of Bandon, on Oregon's southern coast. The site has proven to be complex, including evidence of past use as both a cemetery and living site with specialized areas for the harvest and processing of estuarine resources. The site includes huge quantities of shell found in concentrated refuse heaps or middens. Samples of this shell have been taken over the course of excavations and stored for later consideration and analysis, the results of which should lend to greater theory concerning aboriginal subsistence and culture of the occupants of the lower Coquille river estuary. In this analysis of shell material from 35CS43, several previous shell analyses on the Oregon coast are summarized. A shell sample drawn in 1990 is then quantified and analyzed. Finally, information presented is formulated into a model for future excavations and shell analyses. To understand the shore it is not enough to catalogue its life. Understanding comes only when, standing on a beach, we can sense the long rhythms of earth and sea that sculpted its land forms and produced the rock and sand of which it is composed; when we can sense with the eye and ear of the mind the surge of life beating always at its shore blindly pick up an empty shell and say 'This is a murex.' or 'That is an angel wing.'. True understanding demands intuitive comprehension of the whole life of the creature that once inhabited this empty shell: how it survived amid surf and storms, what were its enemies; how it found food and reproduced its kind, what were its relations to the particular sea world in which it lived. / Graduation date: 1994