Archaeology Exercise: Patterns of Refuse Disposal

            If you want to know what is really going on in a community, look at its garbage

                                               Emil Haury

RESEARCH ACTIVITY

In this exercise you and your group partners will collect observations on each of the team members refuse

disposal activities and that of people around campus. The goal of this exercise is to show what garbage disposal

teaches us about how archaeology reconstructs the lives of now extinct societies.

Each of you will record data on how you go about disposing of trash or refuse for a period of 24 hours on the

attached chart (pp. 2 of this worksheet) and answer three questions about your personal refuse disposal. As a

second part of this exercise your group...