Archaeology Magazine - October 1974 - 16

This recording sheet, read in conjunction with the Garbage Item Code List, contains the following
information: the data were collected from censustract 18 on April 19. Item 1 consistedof paper
towel sheets, 26 in number; the item discarded was made of paper of which more than 9 units
were counted (nine is the highest number that can be recorded in column 50-57; if there are
more than nine units it is necessaryto refer to column 14-16). Item 2 consisted of one container of
beef (hamburger); 12 ounces were bought for 76c in Luck Supermarket. None was wasted, and
only the plastic container was discarded. Item 3 also consistedof beef (sirloin steak): 29 ounces
were bought at $3.90from Luck Supermarket. Fifty grams were wasted; the plastic container
was discarded.
appearance. The Garbage Project collected much
of its beef-waste information at the height of the
beef shortage in the spring of 1973- at a time
when there must have been pressure not to waste
beef products. Perhaps, in an ironic way, the
shortage actually compounded waste as shoppers
purchased in bulk in order to save a few pennies
and then found themselves unable to properly
store the meat they had bought; such errors, in
storage and the scheduling of meals, are typical
of middle-class households, which regularly buy
cheap meats but which also, paradoxically,
tend to waste expensive cuts which they buy at
random. We estimate that such households average $100 a year in the waste of edible beef
alone; this means that at a minimum, the city of
Tucson, Arizona, is wasting $500,000 worth of
beef each year.
Jl^rchaeological research into modern-day garbage will take time to refine. We must reconstruct purchase and consumption patterns with
an eye to such variables as garbage disposals,
fireplaces, household pets and the recycling of
containers, all of which destroy a certain amount
of evidence. But then, archaeologists have always been concerned with such factors. The
most exciting and fruitful thrust in recent methodological developments, as far as I am concerned, involves the effort to reconstruct the position and importance of material items in ongoing systems from the discard context in which
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they were found. Put a bit more simply, the concept of rate in resource flow is basic to one's
ability to extrapolate patterns of sustained behavior from garbage samples. We undertook an
investigation in thirty Tucson households to determine the frequency of container discard and
to correlate this rate with patterns of purchase
and consumption, as determined from information given by the members of each household.
The results indicated, as one might expect, that
the rates of purchase, consumption and discard
were systematically related.
The notion of sustained rate, then, seems to be
an accurate characterization of the ongoing process of household consumption, discard and replacement of groups of items during regular
periods of accumulation. It also seems to provide
a firm basis for inferring patterns of consumption and purchase from discard behavior. Once it
is refined, the concept of rate may prove an extremely useful tool for the study of site formations by archaeologists faced with the problem
of reconstructing long-term patterns of sustained
behavior from garbage middens.
Results of studies such as ours may also prove
instructive to archaeologists coping with other
traditional problems. It has always been assumed that waste or conspicuous consumption in
ancient societies is related to the elites of those
social systems. Modern refuse, at least in Tucson, suggests another conclusion altogether. The
city's high-income residences are associated with
the discard of very little waste of either food or

Archaeology Magazine - October 1974

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - October 1974