Public Benefits of

Edited by Barbara ]. Little

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Hantman, I. L. 1990. Between Powhatan and Quirank: Reconstructing Monacan Culture and History in the context of Jame stown. Americøn Anthropologíst 92: 67Ç90. I Kukla, J. 1985. orde¡ ard chaos in Early America: political and social stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia. American Historical Repiew 90. 27 S-9g. Kupperman, K. O.1979.Apathy and Death in EarlyJamestown.,f ournøl of Americøn Garbology History 66:2440. 1996. The Founding Years of Virginia-and the . Virginia The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage Magazine of History andBiography 104: 106-8. Lurie, N' o. 1959. Indian Adjustment to European Civilization. rn seoenteenth- Century Ameríca: Essays in Colonial History, ed. J. M. Smith, 3H0. Chapel W. L. Rathje Hill: University of North Ca¡olina Press. Morgan, E. S. 1971. The Labo¡ Problem at Jarnestown, 1607-1618. American His- torical Ret¡iew 76: 595-477. 7975. American Slaoery, American Freedom: The Ordeal ot' Colonial Vir- ginia. New York: W W Norton. Noel Hume, I.1982. Martin's Hundred:The Discoaery of a Lost ColoniølVirginia Gold cups, jade beads, mummies, temples lost in rainforests. To me, these Settlement. New York: Knopf. were the essence of archaeology. How I longed to become an archaeologist 7994. The Virginia Adoenture : Roanoke to J ames Towne, an Archaeolo gical and to journey back to the days of our ancient ancestors by following and Historical Odyssey. New York: Knopt. breadcrumb trails of artifacts they had left behind. When I was nine, that -.Rutman, D., and A. Rutman. 1984. A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginía, was the archaeology I dreamed about as I drifted to sleep beside my dog- 1650-1750. New York: W. W. Norton. eared copy of.The Wondert'ul World of Archaeology (fessup 1956). Styrna, C. A. 1985. The House of Walte¡ Aston: The Historical and Architectural Reconstruction of a Seventeenth-Century House in Tidewater Virginia. Unpub- Fourteen years later I found myself in graduate school and immersed in lished research , College of William and Mary. the stifling smell of dusty potsherds, the quiet punctuated every so often Tate, T. W., and D. L. Ammerman (eds.). 1979.The Chesapeake in the Seaenteenth by the thunderous explosions of 200 or 300 broken pieces of being Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society. Chapel Hill: University of North poured out of linen bags onto masonite laboratory tables. These potsherds Carolina Press. had become my path to ancient lives. By this time I had learned enough of archaeology's arcane secrets to appreciate fully the stories that could be told by potsherds and other commonplace discards about a society's rise and fall and its day-to-day existence. I was, in fact, excited to be systemati- cally and scientifically analyzing the vast expanse of discards to discover replicated patterns of human behavior that we can still recognize today. At the time, I believed I was about to add my own small piece to understand- ing the puzzle of. the Classic Maya collapse (see Rathje 7971,7973).By 1968 that was the archaeology I dreamed about when I dozed off late at night on top of my well-worn copy of Uaxactun, Guatemala: Excøtsations ot' L931.-1.937 (Smith 1950). Today, twenty-seven years later still, I look back on my past dreams of archaeology with a bemused smile, my hands full of fresh garbage and my mind dancing with thoughts of the calories from fat in our diet or of the recyclables mixed into garbage instead of separated for curbside collection. 86 W. L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage 87

As for today's dreams-who could fall asleep while perusing the Environ- chaeologists, who always expect to get rheir hands dirty. To archaeologists, mental Protection Agenry's Report 530-R-96-O0I, Characterization of in fact, contemporary garbage is a gold mine of information. No society on Municípal Solid in the Llnited States: 1995 lJpdate (Franklin Asso- earth has ever discarded such rich refuse-much of it packaging, which ciates 1996)? identifies its former contents by brand, type, cost, quantity, ingredients, What happened to my visions of archaeology? Nothing, really. Diverse nutrient content, and more. Yielding to this temptation, between 1987 and as they appeaç the three perspectives pivot upon the same point: coming to 1995 archaeologists from the Garbage Project at the University ofArizona understand some basic threads in the fabric of humanity-which our an- systematically excavated, hand-sorted, weighed, measured for volume, cestors wove i¡to us and which we are likewise weaving into our descen- and recorded thirty tons of contents from fifteen around North dants-by touching as a person and by measuring as a scientist the arti- America-located from California to Toronto and from the deserts of Ari- facts people make and leave behind. With this personal preamble as zona to the Everglades of Florida. The information that emerged from background, I will now describe the history, narure, and public benefits of a these "digs" was unexpected (see Rathje 1989, 199L; Rathje and Murphy type of archaeology called garbology, which I believe is currently adding 1992a). one small piece of understanding to help solve the puzzle of. the human In contrast to all of the concern directed at fast food paclaging and dis- enrSma. posable diapers, the archaeological data dernonstrated that both items fo- "Buried Alive: The Garbage Glut" was the cover headline of N eusweek, gether accounted for less than 2 percent of volume within refuse November 27, 1989.'âre We Throwing Away Our Future with Our deposited over the last ten years. Even more surprising, because of indus- Trash?" had been the title of the "American Agenda" segment of ABC try-wide "light-weighting"-that is, making the same form of item but Eoening Nezos znith Peter Jennings on December 2,7988.In the late 1980s, with less resin- grocery bags had become thinner and more the amount of garbage America generated had reached crisis proportions crushable, to the point that a hundred plastic bags consumed less space for the media and its public. The vast majority of refuse was sent to land- inside a landfill than did twenty paper bags. If all three items of central fills, and those landfills were filling up and closing down. Where was the public concern had been banned and had not been replaced by anything, garbage to go? the garbage archaeologists were certain that landfill managers would not Concerned citizens, convinced that action had to be taken without delay, have noticed the difference. quickly identified garbage culprits among the discards that visibly shocked At the opposite end of the specrum of contents were materials that them everyday-litter. Editorials in prestigious newspapert such as the occupied large portions of landfill space but received little public attention. NewYork Times, echoed popular perceptions that fast food packaging, dis- Construction/demolition debris (C/D) was one. Because of definitional is- posable diapers, and plastic grocery bags were singularly responsible for sues, C/D was not even included in the EPI(s national estimates of the "straining" our landfills. Public officials in communities nationwide pro- refuse going to (MSW) or standard community posed banning the accused perpetrators. In the meantime, into what kinds refupe landfills. Nevertheless, C/D accounted for 20 percent or more of of holders were responsible folks to put their burgerq hot coffee, groceries, excavated refuse by volume in Garbage Project digs and was the second and infants? Oddly enough, the answer was not clea4, because in all the largest category of discarded materials recovered from MSW landfills. commotion there had been few facts presented about what actually was in The largest category occupying MSW landfill space was paper. This was garbage and landfills. It was at this point that a new kind of archaeologist, true for refuse buried in the 1980s as well as for refuse dating as far back as the garbologist studying fresh garbage was able to unearth a few relevant the 1950s, because in most landfills, paper seemed to biodegrade very facts that began to fill the information vacuum surrounding our discards. slowly. As a result, by volume nearly half of all of the refuse excavated by At the time, workers around the country were regularly digging into the Garbage Project has been , magazines, packaging papel, and landfills to install methane vents, but no one paid much attention to rhe nonpackaging paper, such as computer printouts and phonebooks. refuse that was exhumed in the process. After all, it was just smelly, dis- Not long after the Garbage Project's first reports of its landfill digs, the gusting garbage. The smell and look of discards were not deterrents ro ar- energy directed at passing bans was largely redirected toward curbside re- 88 W. L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage g9

If indeed there are useful things to learn from an archaeorogical study of. our garbage-things that can enrich human lives and minimte th" rrn- desirable environmental consequences of the industrialized world-why wait until we (and I literally mean you and I) are all dead and buried to find out? This was what a group of students and I thought when we founded the Garbage Project at the University of Arizona in the spring of 1973. Today all of us who are a part of the project, including codirector Wilson Hughes, who was one of the founding studentg are still thinking along about garbage on the parr of policy planners, the media, and the public had these same lines. Garbology now! changed-and that garbology had been validated as a new kind of archae- After nearly three decades of sorting, recording, and interpreting MSW, ology, one that could make an immediate public contribution. garbology, or the archaeological study of contemporary urban refuse, has become a recognizable subspecialty within archaeology and other behav- The Rationale for Garbage Archaeology ioral sciences (Thomas 7979; Eagan 7985, I99Ia,1991b; podolefsky and Brown 1993; American Heritage Dictionary 1992; Oxt'ord Dictionary 7995; For as long as there have been archaeologists, there have been jokes, car- Encyclopaedia Britannica 1996; Turnbaugh et al. 1996; Rathje in press). toons, and stories guessing at what it would be like for an archaeologist to Perhaps the defining characteristic of all garbology digs is that they com- dig through our own refuse (see Macaulay 1979). While often humorous, bine traditional concerns of archaeological method and theory to produce such speculations are based on a serious rationale: if archaeologists can results that are immediately relevant to understanding and mitigating cur- learn important information about extinct societies from patterns in an- rent social dilemmas (see Rathje 1996). The highly publicized,,'garbage cient garbage, then archaeologists should also be able to learn important crisis" more or less had the Garbage Project's name on it and made it rela- information about contemporary societies from patterns in fresh garbage. tively easy to convince the public at large that the study of contemporary The pieces of pottery, broken srone tools, and cut animal bones that tradi- refuse provided a significant contribution to society. The crisis did not tional archaeologists dig out of old refuse middens provide a surprisingly erupt in the media, howeve¡, until the Mobro garbage barge sailed in1987 detailed view of past lifewayt just as all the precisely labeled packages and and gained an enduring place in the nation's environmental consciousness the food debris and the discarded clothing and batteries in modern when it wandered for weeks looking for a place to dump its cargo. middens reveal intimate details of our lives today. During rhe summer of 192I, A. V. Kidder seemed to understand this Fresh Sort Rationale and Results when he took rhe trouble to observe the artifacts that were coming out of a trench being cut for a sewer line through a "fresh" garbage dump in An- The Garbage Project's first data collection format, called the Regular Sort, doveç Massachusetts. From at least this point onward, archaeologists have was designed to sample and record household pickups of fresh refuse (a studied contemporary urban refuse informally and sporadically in class pickup is all of the materials placed out by a single household on one regu- exercises and methodological experiments. A variety of subspecialties- lar refuse collection day). From the beginning, project procedures have rig- ethnoarchaeology, historic sites archaeology, industrial archaeology, and orously protected the anonymity of the households discarding the refuse experimental archaeology-have been edging ever closer to analyzing sampled. what citizens of the industrialized world discarded last yeaç last month, Solid waste managers have been characterizing by material com- and even yesterday. All archaeologists are aware that contemporary rub- position (pape4 plastic, glass, etc.) and weight since the 1880s. To these bish will inevitably be studied in due course by traditional archaeologists traditional measuret the Garbage Project added a series of innovations, in the same manner we now study the middens of Troy and Tikal, perhaps including records from package labels (brand, cost, solid weight or fluid in a hundred or so years from now volume of original conrents, specific type of contents, packaging materials) 90 W. L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage 91

and more detailed ,,food breakdowns of broad refuse categories, such as hol containers, discards adhere to the same patterns found in garbage col- waste" (which ,,food was separated into "once-edible food,, versus prepa- lected anonymously at the census tract level (Ritenbaugh and Harrison ration debris," both being identified by specific food item; see Hughes 7984). 1984). Because of their exacting level of detail, the Regular sort data fires Although independent of informant-based distortions, refuse analysis documenting residential refuse are ideal for analyzing the role of specific is susceptible to other forms of bias. The most obvious one is garbage household behaviors in generating wastes. Today the Garbage project,s disposals, and the Garbage Project has included studies not unlike those fresh refuse records, compiled from a long-term ongoing study in Tucson, of ethnoarchaeology, to develop correction factors for ground-up food Arizona, and short-term studies in five other cities, form a one-of-a-kind (Rathje and McCarthy 1977). Other biases include people who drop off database now spanning close to thirty years. reryclables at buy-back centers and the fact that behavior can only be char- Garbage Project studies of fresh refuse have consistently documented a acterized at the household level and not for individuals. few basic patterns in the way we interact with the material world around Overall, the advantages of garbage sorting as an alternative to self-re- us. First, what people say they do and what they actually do are ot'ten porting and as a quantitative measure of behavior outweigh its limitations, different. For example, while respondents rarely report ro interviewers and the first pattern identified-that self-reports differ from refuse rec- that they waste any food at home, nearly three decades of Garbage project ords-has opened up a broad new research arena. studies have documented that households generally waste about 15 per- The second conclusion drawn from refuse analysis is that there is clear cent of the solid food they buy (Rathje 7976, 1986; Fung and Rathje 1982). patterning in the dift'erences betuieen what people report they do and Such misreports characterize a broad range of household behaviors. In what they actually do. This conclusion was drawn from a number of Gar- other words, people who are interviewed or fill out surveys do not accu- bage Project srudies designed to verify consumer responses to various rately report how much food they waste, what they eat and drinþ what kinds of diet questionnaires by comparing self-reports about food use they recycle, or the household hazardous wastes they throw away (see against packaging and food debris in fresh refuse. One specific self-report/ Rathje and Murphy 7992a,7992b). refuse pattern the Garbage Project has documented is the "good provider This discovery, of course, is not a great surprise. It is common knowl- syndrome": a female adult reporting for a household as a whole has a ten- edge among behavioral scientists that any methodology depending upon denry to overreport everything the household uses by 10 to 30 percent or the accuracy of answers people give to interviewers or on surveys suffers more. Another pattern is the "surrogate syndrome": to find out how much from problems of informant bias (Webb et al.tS66). Respondents may not alcohol is consumed by household members, do not ask a drinker; drinkers be able to recall specific behaviors accurately and quantitatively, such as consistently underreport their alcohol consumption by from 40 to 60 per- how many ounces of green beans they ate the day before or how often cent. Instead, ask a nondrinker; nondrinkers report accurately what drink- they discard a half-full container of pesticide; and even if respondents can ers drink (Johnstone and Rathje 1986; Dobyns and Rathje 1987). The sec- recall behaviors accurately, such as beer drinking or changing the oil in ond conclusion is again no real surprise. their carq they may not want to admit to rhe specifics. Unlike the first t!vo, the third conclusion was full of surprises: the dif- At this point it should be noted that systemaric garbage sorts avoid in- ferences between respondent reports and the material remains in refuse formant biases. Refuse data, like virtually all archaeological data, are quan- frequently indicate directly opposed behaviors. To be more specific, re- titative: packaging and commodity wastes can be weighed, measured for spondents normally report rational behatsiors, while their actual behaa- volume, and chemically analyzed, and their labels can be read for further iors olten appear irrational. One of the best examples of this kind of coun- information, all without relying upon the memory or honesty of respon- terintuitive relationship between self-reports and refuse occurred during dents. When refuse is identified by specific household (as opposed to re- the highly publicized "beef shortage" in the spring of 7973. At this time, cording only the generating household's census tract), the Garbage Project when consumers were complaining bitterly about high prices and erratic obtains permission for its sorts from the discarders. Even under these con- availability, the Garbage Project was recording the highest rate of edible ditions of self-awareness, project analyses show that, except for fewer alco- beef waste it has ever documented (Rathje and McCanhy 1977). 92 W. L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage 93 Several other instances of this kind of counterintuitive report/refuse what people think is happening and what is really going on. such studies pattern have been documenteà.Ln7977, the Garbage Project gave meat fat have already led to some general principles of the differences berween its own separate category. Using the long-term Tucson database, the Gar- people's awareness of their behavior and their actual behavior (see Rathje bage Project determined that in 1983 people began cutting off and discard- 1ee6). ing much larger than normal quantities of the separable fat on fresh cuts of red meaq at the same time they also bought less fresh red meat. Both ac- tions seemed to be responses to a National Academy of Sciences study which was widely reported in the media and which identified fat from red meat as a cancer risk factor (Committee on Diet, Nutrition, and Cancer 1983). There was just one problem. The consumers under study replaced Garbage Project's data records and interpretations is based upon a hundred the fresh red meat in their diet with processed red meat-salami, bologna, years of previous archaeological studies analyzing refuse to reconstruct sausage, hot dogs, etc.-which contained large quantities of hidden fat, so behavior. that the level of fat intake in the diet did not fall; instead, it stayed the same For a hundred yearg archaeologists have also been studying refuse in or rose (Rathje and Ho 1987). attempts to count the number of people who lived within particular sites or case involved household A third hazardous wastes (Rathje et al. 1987). regions at particular times. The Garbage Project has now done the same In 1986 Marin County sponsored a "Toxics Away! Day" to collect house- thing at the request of the federal government. The U.S. Census Bureau hold hazardous wastes, such as used motor oil and unused pesticides. The has long been aware of the criticism rhat its interview-survey methods Garbage Project recorded residential refuse two months after the collec- Iead to significant undercounts of ethnic minorities, especially young adult tion day and compared it to household discards sorted before the collection males, who may be undercounted by 40 percent or more. In 1986 the Qual- day. The results were completely unexpected: there were nearly twice as ity Assurance Branch of the Census Bureau funded a study to answer the many potentially hazardous wastes recorded in the refuse after the collec- question: Could the Garbage Project count people based on the types and tion day than there had been beforehand. The data clearly demonstrated quantities of residential refuse they generate? The answer was yes (Rathje that all of the increase in hazardous wastes was due to the discarding of and Tani 1987). For any unit of time, the overall weight of total refuse Iarge quantities of items from only a few households (such as three or four discarded (minus yard wastes, which change markedly between suburbs half-full cans of paint or several full containers of pesticide in just one and inner cities) varies directly with the number of resident discarders. The pickup). The Garbage Project's interpretation was that the media activity Garbage Project converted quantities of refuse thrown out per week to surrounding the collection day had made people aware of potentially haz- numbers of people by using per-person generation rates documented in ardous commodities in their homes. For those who missed the collection test areas. Overall, a series of garbage-based esdmates of population came day, howeve4, no other appropriate avenue of discard had been identified. within 5 percent of the actual number of residents. The Garbage Project As a result, some residents disposed of their hazardous wastes via the only now stands ready to verify census counts with a method that does not avenue available to them-their normal refuse pickup. The same pattern violate subjects' anonymity. was verified in subsequent studies in Phoenix andTucson (Rathje andWil- son 1987). The lesson learned: communities that initiate hazardous waste Ongoing Research collection days should inform residents of future collection times or of other avenues for appropriate discard. During the last two decades, researchers in the Garbage Project have Counterintuitive interview/refuse patterns of this kind indicate that worked on a large number of specialized topics similar to rhe census study, consumers may not be aware of how much their reported behaviors differ all of which are the focus of continuing inquiry. Landfill excavations, for from their actual behaviors and that the Garbage Project is beginning to example, are gauging the impact of rerycling programs on the volume of document a previously unmeasurable phenomenon in the gap between wastes that reach landfills. The first reported results indicated that To- 94 W. L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage 95 ronto/s "blue box" curbside program has conserved some 20 cally dedicated to providing everyone possible with the same insights they percent of landfill space in the metropolitan area since 19g2 (Tani et al. have drawn from their own 1e92). hands-on sorting of residential refuse. In attempting to share results, we at the Garbage Project have focused Recovery of2,425 datable, readable newspapers from Garbage project most directly on schools, museums/ and other avenues of access to stu- excavations dramatically changed the view that is cám- dents. The rationale is that the archaeology of our own society will mean monplace in landfills. To understand better why biodegradation does and the most to the young people who can do the most with archaeological does not occur in landfill environments, the Garbage project has so far insights. Currently, project members are especially proud of two endeav- conducted four cooperative digs involving microbiologists and environ- ors. The first is the compilation of The WRAP (Waste Reduction Alterna- mental engineers from the university on Arizona, university of okla- tioes Program) Resource Mønual (Dobyns and Hughes 1994), which has homa, university of wisconsin-Madison, Argonne National Lioratories, been distributed to schools throughout Arizona and the United States. The and Procter and Gamble's Environmental Laboratory (suflita et al. 1993). manual is designed to help students and teachers learn how their indi- Recently, the Garbage Project has initiated several studies integrating vidual behaviors produce significant_quantities of garbage and how they fresh and landfill data on hazardous wastes in MSW The h""r.y -ãt"l "rl can make changes that will greatly decrease that garbage. The second en- says of fines (that is, finely crushed samples) are being compared with de- deavor resulted in "The Garbage Dilemma," an interactive video on per- tailed item-by-item lists (such as 2 light bulbs, 1 drain opener can, rwo manent display in the Hall of Science in American Life at the Smithson- newspapers, etc.) of the refuse identified within each 150-pound landfill ian's National Museum of American History. The video was the product of sample. The goal is to determine the rate of movément of heavy metals in cooperation among Garbage Project stafl the Smithsonian's design staff, commodities and inks and other hazardous wasres from refuse into the and the Chedd-Angier Production Company. Schools and museums-nor landfill matrix (Rathje et al.I99Z). landfills-are the kinds of environments where we hope Garbage project results will eventually come to reside. Garbage Project Students and Staff Garbology in the Twenty-First Century The Garbage Project does not consist merely of systematic records com- piled by hands-on sorting of household garbage; it is also made up of the What has set the archaeologists of the Garbage Project apart from orher sorters and project staff attached to the hands. While many people find the behavioral science researchers is that all of our studies have been grounded results of our studies interesting, most of them also find the sorting pro- in the hands-on sorting of quantifiable bits and pieces of garbage, in place cess itself revolting. A few market researchers realized the in 1950s that of collecting data through interview-surveys, government ilocuments, or household refuse contained useful information, but after repeated experi- industry records. In other words, the Garbage Project is studying con- ments they found that they could not pay people to sort refuse. Those sumer behaviors directly from the material realities they leave behind hired either quit quickly or kept sloppy records. Who would possibly be rather than from self-conscious self-reports. The exhaustive level of detail willing to rummage through someone else,s smelly trash and keep accu- Garbage Project student sorters use to record data has also set the studies rate records of its contents? That is a good question. apart from other data sources. Many local plans by engineering consultant The answer is a matter of public record. Rubbish! (Rathje and Murphy firms and even by solid waste managers are based on national character- 1993-the paperback edition of Rathje and Murphy 1992a) contains a list ieations of solid waste generation, which involve estimaring residential of more than 900 university students and others who sorted refuse with and other discards by using government and industry records of solid the Garbage Project between 1973 and 1991. The intimate archaeological waste production-items of questionable validity-together with an un- view these and subsequent sorters have had of the materials discarded told number of untested assumptions. Even if national estimates are accu- from households much like their own has provided them a unique with rate, they are available only at the level of categories of material composi- perspective; and while they do not preach to otherq they are enthusiasti- tion-so much plastic, glass, aluminum, papet steel, and so on. But how 96 W. L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage 97 can anyone plan with these data? Most of these materials come from the larly states, "Garbage expands so as to fill the receptacles available for its containment." Parkinson's Law of Garbage is really quite simple. When people have small garbage cans, larger items---old cans of paint, broken furniture per- petually awaiting repai¡, bags of old clothing-are not rypically thrown away. Rathe4 these materials sit in basements and garages, often until a refuse. In other words, in conrrast to virtually all other sources of informa- residence changes hands. But when homeowners are provided with plastic tion, the Garbage Project looks at refuse the way all archaeologists do-as mini-Dumpsters, they are presented with a new oprion. Before long, what the material result of human behavior. was once an instinctive "I'll shove this in the cellar" becomes an equally project Ultimately, the contribution of the Garbage comes down to one instinctive "I'll bet this will fit in the dumper." simple component: in order to understand and mitigate important prob- The Garbage Project has compared the components ofTucson residen- lems, we must first become aware of the problems and measure their ma- tial refuse collected before and after_mechanizarion. Solid waste discards terial impact. Measuring material impacts can lead to some surprising re- went from an average of less than fourteen pounds per biweekly pickup to sults. Consider the greatest irony of the so-called garbage crisis. an average of more than twenty-three pounds. The largest increase was in Since 1987 communities everywhere have been promoting recycling, the yard waste category, followed by "other" (broken odds and ends), food reuse, source reduction, and everything else they can to decrease the waste, newspapers, and textiles. The first pickup of the week was substan- amount of refuse being discarded. At the same tinie, to cut collection costs tially heavier than the second, reflecting the accomplishment of weekend and reduce worker injuries, many communities have converted to auto- chores, and the discards in that pickup were loaded with consistently larger mated systems that depend on standard-sized garbage containers. The con- quantities of hazardous waste than the Garbage Project has come to expect tainers that most families used to buy for themselves were usually sixry in a typical load. These findings suggest that the introduction of 9O-gallon gallons in size, about what one person could carry a short distance. The containers should be of concern for three reasons. new standardized containers have wheels and are one-third bigge4, ninety Firsç the increase in discarded suggests that one counterpro- gallons, to accommodate the needs of the largest families. By all accounts, ductive result of larger containers may be a lower participation rate in any the result of these changes has been that rerycling is increasing and on- form of recycling. For those who find separating out recyclables a bothet, the-job injuries are down. So fa4, so good. the 9O-gallon bin is a no-penalty means to circumvent the issue. Likewise, The Garbage Project hands-on sorts, however, add another dimen- the increase in "other" and textiles could mean that people are using the sion-a darker side that no orher source has mentioned (Rathje 1993). bin as an alternative to the donation avenue/ whereby unwanted resources When the Garbage Project first studied Phoenix residential refuse, the ciry wind up with the Salvation Army and other charities, or even as an alter- of Phoenix, unlike Tucson, already had an automated system. Garbage natiye to yard sales. Project personnel were surprised to discover that Phoenix households Second, the substantial increase of hazardous waste indicates that the discarded nearly double the refuse thrown out by households a hundred Iarge bins are a convenient alternative to storing toxic items at home until miles away in Tucson. The mystery was greatly clarified when the city of they are used up or until the next household hazardous waste collection Tucson switched ro the automated system and its household refuse gen- d"y. eration rate increased by more than one-thi¡d. At this point, the Garbage Third, at the same time as all-out recycling programs are being imple- Project identified a "Parkinson's Law of Garbage" with implications for mented to try to decrease the flow of garbage, collection techniques are every city's solid strategy (Rathje 1993). being installed that may unwittingly be increasing the overall flow of gar- The original Parkinson's Law was formulated in 1957 by C. Northcote bage to an even higher rate. Parkinson, a British bureaucrat, who concluded, "Work expands so as to fill The evidence for Parkinson's Law of Garbage is not yet conclusive. The the time available for its completion." Parkinson's Law of Garbage simi- only way to know whether it is a behavioral pattern is through hands-on 98 W L. Rathje The Archaeology of Fresh Garbage 99

garbology. This archaeological research question is important to answer Macaulay, D.7979. Motel ot' the Mysteûes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. for the method and theory of archaeology, for culture history, and for our New York Tim¿s Editors. 1988. Serious about Plastic . In ',Topics of Ï/re cities' immediate economic and environmental future. Garbologists, grab Times." NezoYorkTimes, January 8. yourgloves and face masks! One day the results of your efforts may be OxfordDictionary øndIJsage Guide to the English Language.11995. Oxford: Oxford enough to convince Indiana fones to turn his trowel on his own discards- University Press. and then rerycle them. Podolefsky,4., and P. I. Brown (eds.). 7993. Applying Anthropology: An Introduc- tory Reaìler.3rd ed. Mountain View Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Company. Rathje, W. L. 1971. The Origin and Development of Lowland Classic Maya Civiliza- References ¡on. American Antiquity 36(3): 27 5-a5. 1973. Classic Maya Development and Denouement. In Classíc Maya Col- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 7992.3rð,ed- Boston: lapse, eà.T. P. Culbe¡t.405-54. Albuquerque: University of New P¡ess. Houghton Mifflin. Mexico 7976. Socioeconomic Conelates ot' Household Residuals: Phase L. Einal Committee on Diet, Nutrition, and Canceç Assembly of Life Sciences, National Report to the Prograrn for Research Applled to National Needs. Washington, Research CounclI.T9S3.Diet,Nutritíon, and Cancer. Washington, D.C.: National D.C.: National Science Foundation. Academy Press. 1986. Why We Th¡ow Food Away. Atløntic Monthly 257(4):7+-1,6. Dobyns, S., and W. W. Hughes. 7994. The WRAP (Waste Reduction Alternatioes 1989. Rubbish ! Atlantic Monthly 246(6): 99-109. Progrøm) Resource Manual. Phoenix: Final Report to the Reduce, Reuse, and 1991. Once and Futu¡e Landfills. Natíonal Geogrøphic779(5):176-34. Recycle Grant Program, Arizona Department of Environmental euality. 1993. A Perverse Law of Garbage. Garbage 4(6):22-23. 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of Household. Hazardous Wastes from Marin County, Calit'ornia and New Or- Ieans, Louisíana. U.S. EPA Environmental Monitoring Systems Laboratory Re- 9 port no. EPA/6OOlx-87h29, Las Vegas. Rathje,W. L.,W.W. Hughes,D. C.Wilson, M. K.Tank, G. H.Archeç R. G. Hunt, and T. W. Jones. 1992. The Archaeology of Contemporary Landfills. American Antiq- uity 57(3):43747. Empowerment, Ecology, and Evidence Ritenbaugh, C. K., and G. G. Harrison. 1984. Reactivity and Garbage Analysis. Amerícan Behat¡iorcl Scientist 28(7): 5l-70. The Relevance of Mortuary Archaeology to the public Smith,A. L.1950.lJaxactun,Guatemøla:Excaaations of 1931-1932. Publication no. 588. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Suflita, f. M., G. P. Gerba, R. K. Ham, A. C. Palmisans W. L. Rathje. and J- A. Robin- Thomas A. f. Crist son. 1993. The World's Largest Landfill: Multidisciplinary Investigation. Enoi- ronmental Science and Technolo gy 26(8): 148Ç9a. Tani, M. K., W. L. Rath;e, W. W. Hughes, D. C. Wilson, and G. Couplan¿,.I992.The Toronto Dig: Excaoations at Four Munícipal Solid Waste Disposal Sítes in the G t e a t e r Tor ont o At e a. Toronto: Trash Resea¡ch Corporation. Thomas, D.H.7979. Archaeology. New York: Holt, Rinehart andWinston. In October 1992, the skeletonized face of the "Iceman," a Neolithic hunter Turnbaugh, W. 4., R. Jurmain, H. Nelson, and L. Kilgore. 7996. LJnderstand.ing found in the ice in the Alp+ beckoned readers from magazine racks across PhysicalAnthropology andArcheology.6th ed. Minneapolis/St. Paul:West pub- the country. Gazing at us across 5,000 years, from the cover of Tíme, the lishing Company. Iceman was about to reveal ro an eager public his secrers and those of his Webb, E. D. T. Campbell, R. D. Schwartg and L. J.. Sechrest. 1966.Ilnobtrusíae Mea- ancient counterparts. So intriguing was this mountain wanderer,s story to sutes: Nonreactioe Research in the Social Sciences. Chicago: Rand McNally. millions of Americans that the October 26 edition of. Time became one of the best-selling issues in the magazine's hisrory. At about the same time in New York City, an eighteenth-century cem- etery in lower Manhattan was also becoming the focus of international attention. Excavated under historic preservarion law prior to the construc- tion of a federal office building, the African Burial Ground sparked a highly charged public debate that focused in part on the choice of scientists who would analyze the remains of close to 400 formerly enslaved indi- viduals. In numerous public hearings and other meetings, members of New York City's descendant African-American community forcefully de- manded that an African-American anthropologist direct the laboratory investigation of the excavated bones and artifacts. They further insisted that they be given a significant voice not only in the disposition of the human remains but in the treatment and preservation of the burial ground site itself. A congressional subcommittee hearing was convened to review the matter and a federal steering committee was appointed to act as a liai- son beflveen the community and the General Services Administration, the federal agency responsible for the project. The site evolved into a national symbol of African-American pride and empowerment (LaRoche and Blakey 1997); indeed, plans for the portion of the site that would not be