This activity will demonstrate the application of archaeological methods to the study of the contemporary world and everyday trash. After all, most of the archaeology done around the world involves an examination of and interpretation of ancient or historic trash deposits or everyday items in households. In this exercise, you will practice collecting data relevant to material culture in your life or your household, present these data, and analyze the results to make interpretations about what material culture tells you (the archaeologist) about behaviors, beliefs, and life in your household.
- Jan 10 Announce to your roommates (household) that you will be collecting information from the trash in your household sometime in the next week. Read: sustainability-07-06994.pdf
- Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Acpvdaecek&ab_channel=wastenot1234
- Jan 12-18: Collect trash from your household or dormyou will need to have data from at least two depositional locations and spanning a duration of at least one days accumulation of garbage. (Make sure that you have properly warned people who are responsible for trash in these locations well in advance of your data collection!) You might compare between two trash deposits where you live, or between your house and a friends trash. Examine the garbage from these areas/rooms and compare your interpretations of behavior at the two different places. That is, think about what the garbage tells you about material culture of your life, social behaviors, beliefs or rituals, identities, and who made up the residential group under study (age groups, occupations, special occasions, etc.). You may find it useful to think about what might be missing from these trash collections which would typically be part of the activities at that specific place/room. Are all the different types of people and activities in these rooms of your household or dorm represented in the specific garbage collections you studied? If you chose to compare your trash to a friends think about what the two assemblages might say about similarities and differences between your two lives.
Optional Change: MATERIAL CULTURE JOURNAL
*Only do this part in place of a study of garbage from your household or dorm.* Each student must keep a journal, for the duration of at least one day, in which material culture in everyday life is noted. Students can comment on especially the social, behavioral, ideological (e.g. beliefs), and very personal aspects of the material culture around them, which they are of course noticing more because of the emphasis in archaeology class. You might consider these questions about the material of your everyday life: what different artifacts did you use or see today that you do not normally? How did an artifact take on new meaning today? What symbolism is inherent in some everyday artifacts in your life today that an archaeologist/outsider would not know about? What items did you use in the course of the day, and where are they deposited? What might be the most confusing aspects of your life for future archaeologists if your house were buried in a volcanic eruption right now?
4. Jan 18-21: Write a short paper (3-4 pages, double spaced) analyzing modern household trash. Present the data you collected from the trash deposits in tabular or graph format, analyze what you can infer from the trash/garbage about the life of household occupants, and discuss how an archaeologist would use this information to make conclusions about life in the year 2021. Think about and write a discussion of the questions/topics listed in Step 2 (above). Discuss your analysis in the context of the Sustainability article and the Video on Garbology (citing information from the article and video), and reference Rathje and Murphy in an attached bibliography.
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