Trash or treasure? Sifting through ancient rubbish for archaeological gold

Submitted by coldrum on Tuesday, 11 October 2011 Page Views: 1378

We may not immediately equate the activities of archaeologists to trash sifting. Or imagine that the glass-encased artifacts in museums might be one-time refuse. But quite often, this is exactly the case.

Studying ancient trash from around the world gives archaeologists and historians the chance to understand the habits that defined people's daily lives, said Dr. Richard Meadow, Director of the Peabody Museum's Zooarchaeology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer on Anthropology at Harvard University.

It may not be glamorous but, he said, "much of what archaeology knows about the past comes from trash, if trash is defined as the products of human consumption. Trash is a proxy for human behavior."

The Peabody Museum is staging a series of talks and events, entitled Trash Talk: The Anthropology of Waste until Spring 2012, on the importance of trash to our understanding of human behavior, both in the past and now.

Meadow, who has excavated sites including the ancient Indus city of Harappa in present-day Pakistan, has gleaned much from studying centuries-old trash.

Early dumping grounds, or "middens," are often archaeological and anthropological gold-mines, he said, not just for what can be found there but for what they tell us about ancient civilizations, what they consumed and how they organized their urban space to deal with their waste.

"Much of what archaeology knows about the past comes from trash, if trash is defined as the products of human consumption. The way that ancient cities used to grow and change through time is actually very much related to the evolution of trash," Meadow explained.

Ancient people, he said, quite literally lived with their trash, usually dumping it in the streets outside their homes when it wasn't collected and deposited in special pits.

Sometimes, he said, whole cities would be filled with trash, to the point where the street levels would rise, submerging homes and forcing people to build on top of it.

While this might sound revolting and unhygienic to us now, ancient peoples, said Meadow, became acclimatized to it. And they were at least adept at recycling their trash.

"I think almost all civilizations recycled in one way or another," Meadow said, explaining that ancient peoples across the world would recycle organic matter as fuel, while inorganic refuse would be used to build the foundations of a house.

Precious metals, he said, would be melted down and re-shaped for a variety of tools.

"It's only when you get to the modern period of consumerism that you get this culture of obsolescence," he said.

This prizing of ancient trash may seem at odds with our attitudes to waste today. But according to Meadow, scientists are already at work studying our trash and what it says about us.

Thanks to coldrum for the link to edition.cnn.com. For more of this article, including Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill composed of more than 25 million discarded Roman amphorae, go there.

Note: Whole cities would be filled with trash, to the point where the street levels would rise, submerging homes and forcing people to build on top of it.

Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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