magnolia_mayhemWhat is a good age bracket for this pile of trash I found on my land?
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…
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.