magnolia_mayhemWhat is a good age bracket for this pile of trash I found on my land?
4-6 years, wild guess using some of the junk in my backyard as a reference.
The boombox is the only concrete clue I can identify. It’s an am/fm cassette, but doesn’t seem to have a cd player, so I’m assuming it went out of style in the early aughts. Best guess, this trash is about 20 years old.
leojI think I found the cassette player, although it dates it to the 80s… Although it could of been an old object dumped alongside more contemporary ones, as the cassette doesn’t appear to be as aged as other objects…
Someone dumping some shit might well have had some of the objects much longer than some of the others. And if anything a person is less likely to be dumping new objects, except for disposable things like beer cans.
concur, dumping pile was probably in use during a range of time, curious what might be under there if OP starts poking around with a shovel.
That’s certainly possible too, but what I was getting at was that even a bunch of things dumped at once probably aren’t going to all be the same age.
Agreed, but what I am getting at is trying to determine an absolute earliest possible start date. The pile cannot be older than the oldest object in it, so regardless of any other factors, you can at least determine X is the earliest possible start date, then you can use other details to reconstruct other pieces of data (aka the other objects in the pile)
obviously there will be a range of ages, but I’m just following the thread of the oldest object for a starting point, not as an absolute age for everything in the pile.
Looks like the speakers are a slightly different shape. Maybe it’s an updated version?
I don’t know the exact model of the cassette player, but the silver plastic and the rounded bits of the design to me are very late 90’s to early 2000’s.
My guess is this stuff has only been out there a few years from the general condition.
Hard to say, my reason for guessing older is that the pile appears to be in a fairly dense woodland area. In these types of situations materials do not break down as quickly as they would in direct sunlight, the boogie board on the bottom right leads me to believe the pile has at least partial sun exposure (or it blew from somewhere else / another pile with more sun).
I have seen a 90’s USA football sit exactly like that in a pile for years (5+) and still look relatively inflated, although I bet if you pick that ball up you will quickly realize it has little air and is largely held together by the structure of the material.
R/chaeology
The seams are ripped and decaying and there’s moss or lichen growing on it. I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that that ball has been in the woods for 15 or 20 years. It’s not just going to flatten like a balloon when it’s not at full pressure anymore.
I think I found the cassette player
Nah. The one in your link has round speaker grilles, while the one in OP’s pic have different shaped speaker grilles. Also OP’s one is missing the carry handle.
Does seem to be a similar model and likely related to it, but not quite the same.
renegadesporkIf you really like this, it’s not that far off from how archeologists date stuff. Though they collect a lot more datapoints, have more context, and use more references.
great point, I used to find trash piles like this in the woods around where I lived, and even as a child I always wondered about who put them there, what their life was like, and what people would think about the piles I left behind, how I could leave clearer messages for them so they were not confused.
You may like archeology. My wife is an archeologist and she says that a lot of it is using science and history to make sense of people’s trash.
The thing to remember is our post-industrial conceptualization of trash is a little different than the past. For example, broken projectile points and their flakes are essentially just really old trash that was dropped when it broke or wasn’t useful anymore.
TropicalDingdongI think the toy fishing reel is from this 1995-ish model:
The older 80’s vintage was black:
And the 2000’s model was a very different molding:
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Definitely the 90s. Though maybe only out there for like 5 or 6 years?
can is from 2004.
The character on the body board graphic might give a clue. I don’t recognize it, but the drawing style of the eye looks like early nineties Disney.
I think its loony toons? tweety bird?
Until today I had almost completely forgot the “tweetybird/ Taz” era of style in the mid 90’s
I wonder how many regrettable Taz tattoos are still out in the wild
Maybe one or two winters/seasons.
paraphrandParents should clean up that trash.
That’s been only out in the weather a year or two but I recognize the patina of being stored in a hot garden shed for decades. Someone cleaned out the back of their shed and dumped it.
Two would be pushing it. The leaves would have matted more and built up in greater amounts. Put out last spring is my estimate: that’s one year of detritus.
Assuming this isn’t just two feet off the side of a trailhead or something.
Could have been dumped over multiple seasons, too, not necessarily all at once.
The moss growth on one of the items doesn’t look within a year to me, at least, but I’m also not a biologist.
That’s very possible. On second look there are a few materials that seem more set into the ground. However even the plant growth over them still might fit a time period that includes this currenr spring and last spring. (Assuming this isn’t Australia or anything.) But it could be a favorite dump site for some slumlord in the area.
Also, I have seen garbage piles with moss because the landlord had scraped everything out of a property and dumped it into a ravine. Moss and other plants could easily come with the dump too. But it’s also on netting material which is great for rapid moss growth. But more than one dump is very plausible.
I’d say late 80s to early 90s trash, that football looks like one I bought at a garage sale in the 90s but was at least 10 years old when I bought it.
Plastics often have production dates, a small circle of numbers from 1 to 12 with an arrow points at the month of production with the numbers on either side of the arrow being the year.
That radio looks late 90s to me, possibly even early 2000s. Definitely not 80s.
Looks like a toddler or a young child might have some fun with it, but I wouldn’t recommend letting a child play with trash…
Captain AggravatedBottom center looks like a Fisher Price Fish-N-Reel toy circa 1995.
The Boombox appears to be a Lennox Sound CT-731, That listing features a picture of the bottom of its box bearing a copyright date of 2000.
oyzmoWhat kind of people just dumps garbage like that - what are they thinking? why? whar has happened in their life?
There’s an extra layer of mystery with it being in a wooded area with no path in or out
I did solid waste dump responses when I worked for a health department.
When people who can’t pay to dump have trash, they dump it in the woods, ravines, forestry roads, etc.
Usually the drive to dump trash is when someone dies and someone else is having to clear out their effects, be it family, a landlord, or some worker. Or someone is evicted from their home, vehicle, or encampment.
Otherwise most people hoard it until they die or are evicted.
Cassette player is late 90s
Everything else could be produced any time since then.
I don’t think this stuff has been outside in the sun for more than 18 months.
I should have mentioned that this is under a pretty thick canopy
everyone keeps saying 80s or 90s, yet completely miss the spool of blue Ethernet cable under it all.
everyone is pretty spot on with the boombox and toy.
based on that plus the Ethernet, plus the age on the items. I would say it’s been there since between 2001-2010.
I have no doubt, but it wasn’t something that was so common that you’d leave a whole spool of it out in a pile of junk.
getting your hands on the stuff took effort and it wasn’t cheap back then either unless you were running a business in IT infra.
I don’t think its ethernet cable. I think its string trimmer line. Look at the size of the football grips, and consider that they are closer in frame than whatever type of cable that is.
Also, I’m pretty sure that is some species of Galium growing around there, probably maybe Galium arvense? Vining habit, whorled leaves, disturbed spaces, etc… Its stem is pretty narrow. Much narrower than ethernet cable.
I think you’re right. I can kind of see a spiral on the blue cordage but it’s too pixelated to be for sure.
The Bud Light can design was introduced in 2004 and lasted until 2008. Being one of the most disposable items, I’d guess the pile was made in those years.
That tracks with my cassette player estimation: 2002. Presumably they didn’t trash it while new, but it doesn’t exactly scream quality, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it died shortly after the warranty expired.
So if I were to guess: shortly after that bud light can was introduced, so 2005ish.
Questionable parenting with questionable taste in “beer”
GarboDog