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Despite major environmental degradation, Newark Bay--a corner of New York Harbor—is brimming with life. The Harbor's high biodiversity has been noted since the earliest European explorers. This diversity includes odd tropical fishes that arrive via the Gulf Stream and local residents of high historical or contemporary importance for food and sport such as oysters, sturgeon, eels, and striped bass. There also has been a strong recovery of wading birds such as herons, egrets, and ibis.

Biological memories consist of the biological or genetic material needed to recolonize an ecosystem. They are the remnant populations of plants and animals that civic ecology stewards use to restore broken places. If an organism like an oyster becomes extinct—its biological memory forgotten—restoring that species, alongside the important functions it contributes like food, filtering contaminants from water, and protecting fragile coastlines—becomes impossible. Social memories are memories shared among a group of people and help shape our behaviors, including our actions as members of a community. Residents of New York still retain social memories of healthier city waterways and how oysters played a role in a thriving estuary and waterfront. When social memories of oyster cultivation, gardening, and tree planting also include the genetic material—oyster spat, seeds, and seedlings—they are referred to as social-ecological memories. In a feedback process, civic ecology stewards draw on these memories in their practices and new memories are formed through participating in civic ecology practices.

This chapter considers the late medieval cultural and legal contexts that shaped ideas about pearls and laws governing their harvesting and use in Iberia and Europe more generally. It focuses on two sources in particular. The first is Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and its emphasis on pearls’ sensual, maritime origin as the product of living organisms (oysters) associated with female sexuality as well as the allure and danger of the sea. The second work at the chapter’s heart is the thirteenth-century Spanish law code known as the Siete Partidas, which would form the basis of the capitulaciones (or sailing orders) that Columbus agreed upon with Spain’s monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel before sailing in 1492. The chapter also considers the words for pearls that were in circulation in Spain in 1492 and contained within Antonio de Nebrija’s Castilian Grammar, published that year. As Nebrija acknowledged explicitly, the Grammar stood as a testament to the growing importance of vernacular language and the centrality of language itself to the extension of power. Vernacular language (including the words for pearls) and practice would be transformed by the encounter with the Americas.

The paradox of modern life is that consumers demand government protect them from an ever-greater range of risks, but at the same time complain about ever-greater government control. Reviewing epidemics of foodborne disease in the late 19^th century, Matthew Booker shows how the U.S. government gradually took responsibility for food safety with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. We live longer and healthier lives because of those government regulations. But Americans today are threatened by illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, calling into question once again what is safe food and who should guarantee it.

This chapter explores the long arc of the modern oyster pie from its origins in 16^th-century England to its place as a fallback mainstay of the Eastern Shore of Virginia diet. Through storytelling, oral history, documentary evidence, and recipes, it places oyster pie in the heyday of the oyster industry and the multitude of oyster recipes from the turn of the 20^th century, many published in cookbooks and newspaper columns. The challenge embedded in pursuit of oyster pie is in negotiating the balance between those that were “ordinary” and those that were “precious.” With the archaeology of oyster pie sorted and recipes collected, the chapter turns to the creative work of contemporary chefs related to cuisine and terroir.