It is rare that we think about the garbage that we produce. You throw something away and then forget about it – you’ve passed it out of your hands, done your duty. If asked, I would not be able to recall what I had thrown away in the past week, and yet the garbage that I produce holds valuable data about my behavior, social position, and identity.

The study of garbage is called garbology, and has been a topic of great interest to archaeologists. You may ask why archaeologists, who primarily study the past, would be interested in modern refuse. The answer lies in the connection between material culture (in this case, garbage) and human behavior. Garbology has become a way for archaeologists to better understand the formation of trash deposits (also called middens in archaeological contexts) and get a sense of how representative middens are of the households that produced them.

This past week, our historical archaeology class took the challenge of recording our own garbage (and recycling/compost) for a week and then anonymously analyzing the data of a classmate to see what behaviors we could discern from what they left behind. In looking at a classmate’s data, I was amazed at how much of their daily routine I could recreate. For instance, given the preponderance of instant oatmeal packets, yogurt smoothie containers and Quaker Chewy wrappers, I imagine a hurried breakfast as she rushes out the door to catch a bus to school, tossing a few snacks in her bag as she goes. I might further extrapolate that this classmate is not a morning person, preferring to sleep in as long as possible and then being forced to race through her morning routine.

Through this exercise, I also gained a better understanding of my own trash habits and patterns – I throw away a lot more than I thought I did! As a result, I am now thinking about how I could live more sustainably.

Looking for a challenge this week? Try recording your own garbage and see what you can learn!

If you are interested in learning more about garbology, I recommend Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy (1992: Harper Collins).

Trying to construct the life of my assigned subject in the Garbology project has been an opportunity to see how easy it is to make leaps with data interpretations and cultural knowledge. My subject’s coffee consumption appeared to mirror my own – does that indicate they also require coffee to function on a daily basis? Or, also like myself, perhaps they cannot justify the expense or time required to stop at Starbucks every weekday? I can easily voice the assumption that the absence of any evidence of meat may indicate vegetarianism. It’s also just as possible that availability, expense, or eating meals out of the home could have influenced the contents of my subject’s garbage. A more solid statement regarding the absence of meat products would be supported by the presence of other alternative proteins, which would then perhaps strongly indicate a vegetarian diet.

Though Garbology is a study of the recent past, it provides a good lesson to those who study archaeology of any era: the absence of one sort of item in an extremely limited data set does not always indicate a particular pattern. The presence of coffee may very well indicate a sleepless student, and the absence of meat may point to a vegetarian. But to make the leap and say emphatically “This is the way of life of the subject” is jumping to conclusions without enough supporting evidence. A researcher should critically analyze the data available, question it from multiple angles, and acknowledge when one interpretation is not the only possibility.

**This story was constructed from a self-recorded garbology report from an individual known as Melqart. Below are some of the recordings that was used to construct this story**

It’s a Friday morning and Melqart wakes up feeling off. She knows she only had one glass of wine last night, so it wasn’t a hangover. Dressed, she heads to the kitchen where she finds an empty wine bottle on the table. “My roommate must have finished it” she thinks as she places the bottle in the recycling bin.

She starts eating a banana and boils water for tea while she packs her school supplies. The bus is coming in 15 minutes and she still needs to pack her snacks (a granola bar and orange). She looks for her French bread to make a quick sandwich only to realize it has gone bad. As she throws it away, Melqart thinks about what to do for lunch. She looks out the window and notices it’s another rainy day in Seattle. Suddenly, pho sounds like a reasonable meal. She finishes her tea and catches the bus.

As the day goes by, Mel isn’t feeling any better, but she also isn’t feeling worse. Before going home, she does a quick stop at a Fred Meyers to buy some cough medicine.

Melqart doesn’t want to risk getting sick enough to miss school. But it has been a long week, and on the bus ride home she convinces herself to relax tonight. Upon arriving, she grabs a glass of wine (what better way to relax), orders couple of pizza from Vince’s and puts water to heat up.

As she wait, she does some minuscule cleaning, throwing away the granola wrapper, orange peels, recycling the pizza box and even shreds a couple of documents with private information. She’ll take her medication tomorrow night if her sickness persists. (Spoiler alert, it does).

Selective recordings from Melqart’s report

In a recent garbology project I participated in, each member was given a set of data from one another that listed their garbage from the past week or so. In the sample I received there was food, packaging, cat food cans, and a curious piece of paper that was a boarding pass…to LAS VEGAS! The date for said boarding pass was the 17th of December. So what does this mean? Someone went to Las Vegas for a little winter fun, or maybe to visit family around the holidays? Regardless of what happened I feel that a lot can be learned from this piece of paper in regards to the person/people who threw it away. The conclusion I came to was that they are either from/ are connected to this desert oasis, or flock there every winter to get away from the bitter, harsh, slushy, winter we have here in Seattle. Though my conclusion might be far from the truth, it shows the power in trash. From a single item in the trash, we can learn quite a lot about a person or group of people. As the field of garbology has risen over the past years, we are beginning to better understand our current and not so distant selves in terms of what we do and what we throw away. So whether or not these people are snowbirds based upon their boarding pass, I still know they had some fun in the sun during the holiday season.