Garbology

Garbology is defined as the study of refuse and trash. It provides a lot of information on the changing patterns in modern refuse and thus in society. In Archaeology refuse and trash are usually the only things left to use to gather information about a society. In our class garbology activity we analyzed 15 items to gather information about the owner. Through this interperation one could classify these artifacts to reach a terminus post quem date, ideas about who owned this trash, where the trash came from and differently these same artifacts would be analyzed if found in 1000 years.

In one bag of trash was a Wine Spectator Magazine, a Food & Wine Magazine, a shopping bag from Nine West, a shopping bag from The Gap, a shopping bag from Euro Book, a black tank top, an envelope, a SouthWest travel folder to hold boarding passes, a advertisement postcard on makeup application, a container of dental floss, a Chicago White Sox metal keychain, a paperclip, two terra cotta potsherds, and two coins – a 5 peso Mexican coin and a 1 euro coin. I choose to classify all these items by their function because how an object is used or benefits a person can determine how important it is to them. I broke them down into the following categories: entertainment, storage, enhancement, miscellaneous, and unknown.

Entertainment | Storage | Enhancement | Miscellaneous | Unknown |

Wine Spectator Magazine | Nine West bag | Black Tank Top | Keychain | Potsherds |

Food & Wine Magazine | The Gap bag | Makeup card | Paperclip | |

| Euro Book bag | Dental Floss | Coins | |

| Envelope | | | |

| SouthWest folder | | | |

| | | | |

Once all these artifacts were assigned into a function category I could carefully look at each item and determine the terminus post quem date. The terminus post quem date is September 30, 2007 as listed on the Wine Spectator Magazine.

I would say the person that produced the trash was probably a middle class Caucasian female...