Ruin and utopia
The Perfume of Garbage: Modernity and the Archaeological (pdf)
Michael Shanks, David Platt, William L. Rathje
In the study of archaeology, material culture histories include inseparable processes of “discard, decay, ruin” and products discarded, decayed and ruined - although researchers continue to focus more on the iconic objects themselves.
Ironically, archaeology co-exists with the relatively recent Western cultural aversion to - and separation from - our garbage. Even when it is highly visible around us:
“But by far the most striking example of how little we recognize our discards is based on watching photographers at landfills wading through garbage at least twenty feet deep. At some point the photographers have to change their film roll or video cartridge. Almost invariably, they rip open the film pack, hold the foil or box for a minute, and then stare up with a quizzical look and ask, ‘Is there anywhere around here I can throw this?’ The answer, of course, is, ‘Just drop it!’”
One of the ways archaeologists understand how things change over time is to “focus on what becomes of things as their form and context changes, as they become incorporated into different lives, become history, or garbage, as they slip into new associations” and so archaeology is concerned with artefacts and processes of the everyday.
“We emphasize how the notion of garbage, in its archaeological field of association, is intimately tied to utopian thinking - what would it be like if we didn’t have garbage and everything it represents, if it were picturesque ruin, if there were no urban dereliction, if we could hold on to the past and not let it slip away into rot, if we could build upon the ruin of our heritage.”
Related
Exo-archaeology not to be confused with extraterrestrial archaeology
Where London Stood - “An essential difference between these earlier writings about ruin and the images of the contemporary city in ruin is that the former do not depict the towns of the writers in ruin.”
(Thanks Rod!)