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MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of Environmental Studies MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of Environmental Studies Filip Havlíček Waste as an anthropological constant: History of waste management in Europe from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages A Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Lubor Kysučan, Ph.D Brno 2017 I declare that I have written the thesis independently and all cited sources have been listed in the references. Brno, September 1, 2017 Filip Havlíček 1 Table of Contents Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................... 3 Annotation ............................................................................................................................................... 4 List of original publications ...................................................................................................................... 5 A Description of the Publications ............................................................................................................ 6 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Waste, Materiality, and Archeology ...................................................................................................... 13 The Value of Waste – Everything Has Its Worth .................................................................................... 16 Results ................................................................................................................................................... 18 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 23 Study I. ................................................................................................................................................... 28 Waste Management in Hunter-Gatherer Communities ............................................................ 28 Study II. .................................................................................................................................................. 48 Waste management at the end of the Stone Age ..................................................................... 48 Study III. ................................................................................................................................................. 71 Waste Management in Bronze Age Europe ............................................................................... 71 Study IV. ................................................................................................................................................. 88 Waste and Pollution in the Ancient Roman Empire .................................................................. 88 Study V. ................................................................................................................................................ 115 Waste management and attitudes towards cleanliness in Medieval Central Europe ............. 115 2 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my family for their support not just over the four years of my doctoral studies, but over the whole course of my career as a university student (11 years!). My gratitude belongs to my advisor, doc. Lubor Kysučan, for his practical advice, which often was about more than just school. I would also like to thank my girlfriend, Alexandra Gottierová, with whom I discussed many questions about my dissertation. I am also indebted to my friends, both from university and elsewhere; I would like to thank by name Lukas Blinka, Kateřina Škařupová, Jakub Zálešák, Michal Hořenovský, Zbyněk Ulčák, Bohuslav Binka and all the co-authors of the articles presented here. Finally, I would like to thank “the boys from faculty office no. 3.14” and Nicholas P. Orsillo, in particular, for his translations into English—a language full of treacherous articles. Thank you all very much! 3 Annotation This dissertation examines waste management in several periods of human history, namely in the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Ancient Rome, and the Middle Ages. From a geographical point of view, it focuses mainly on Europe. In each period the dominant materials for production of artifacts were determined, and their gradual transformation into an archaeological source was examined. In several cases, written sources related to waste and environmental issues from the given period were used. At the center of research, however, were always humans and their relationship to waste. Examples of waste management are studied to provide insight into society and its adaptation to the environment. As part of this largely theoretical dissertation, two experiments were carried out: the first one involved burning seashells and the second using ashes to launder clothing. The first experiment demonstrated that shells are an unusable material, which helps explain why massive deposits of this material in extreme amounts can be found. In contrast, the second experiment showed the suitability of ashes as a possible cleaner. This dissertation also seeks out similarities across historical periods and examines certain waste materials throughout the history of humanity. 4 List of original publications This dissertation is based on the following original publications, which are listed in chronological order and will be referred to in the dissertation by Roman numerals. The author of the dissertation is the main author of the following publications. Havlíček, F. (2015). Waste Management in Hunter-Gatherer Communities. Journal of Landscape Ecology, Vol: 8 / No. 2 Havlíček, F., & Morcinek, M. (2016). Waste and Pollution in the Ancient Roman Empire. Journal of Landscape Ecology, Vol: 9/ No. 3 Havlíček, F., & Kuča, M. (2017). Waste management at the end of the Stone Age. Journal of Landscape Ecology, Vol: 10 / No. 1 Havlíček, F., & Kuča, M. (2017). Waste Management in Bronze Age Europe. Journal of Landscape Ecology, Vol:10 / No. 1 Havlíček, F., Pokorná, A., Zálešák, J. (2017). Waste management and attitudes towards cleanliness in Medieval Central Europe. Journal of Landscape Ecology, Vol:10 / No. 2 5 A Description of the Publications This dissertation, which charts the expansive period from the Paleolithic to the Middle Ages, focuses on five particular historical periods. An article about each period was written, with each period being defined by fundamental milestones in human history, such as the transition from a hunter-gather economy to agriculture, the development of metalworking, the rise of classical civilizations, or the planting of the roots of the modern way of life in the Middle Ages. The entire work centers around humans and their relationship with waste, as manifested in waste strategies as environmental adaptations. Waste becomes a material that provides us an opportunity to examine, from a certain angle, the history of human behavior, culture, and adaptation. Cultural waste management is therefore the topic of this dissertation. The first published article deals with waste management and defining the term waste in the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic, primarily in Europe. Considering the length of the Paleolithic in Europe, it was essential to touch on the evolutionary context, which influenced my overall view of waste management in the past. The assumption that the physical and mental abilities of humans were formed through an evolutionary process in the Paleolithic was considered a starting point. Without accepting this evolutionary perspective, many causalities related to at least some human waste strategies would be incomprehensible. Beginning chronologically from the oldest time period proved to be useful in the context of technological progress in the studied piece of history. For the first article an experiment was conducted in which mussel shells were burnt. It confirmed the hypothesis that the materials contained in shell middens were of an unexploitable nature and this contributed to interpreting these prehistoric waste deposits. Because this was practically the author’s first independent publication, the manuscript was sent to a peer-reviewed journal without impact factor. 6 The article was peer reviewed and published in 2015 as “Waste Management in Hunter-Gatherer Communities” in the Journal of Landscape Ecology (JOLE), which is a fully reviewed scientific journal published by the Czech National Chapter of the Association for Landscape Ecology (CZ-IALE). The journal is published in English and is included on the list of peer-reviewed, non–impact factor periodicals published in the Czech Republic. The next published article is titled “Waste and Pollution in the Ancient Roman Empire.” It was co-authored with Miroslav Morcinek, a doctoral student from the Institute of Classical Studies. In this article, we focused on waste strategies and hygiene in ancient Roman times. As part of a semester spent at the University of Bologna, the dissertation author was able to take several trips to Roma and Ostia, conduct field research, and thus flesh out this article with photographs and references to literary sources about Roman waste strategies and systems. Since in 2016 JOLE was included in the database of peer-reviewed SCOPUS journals,
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