Modernity in a Waste Bin; On Waste, Conspicuous Consumption and Agrarian Practices in the Swedish Early Modern Towns of Jönköping, Kalmar and Tornio.

Summary

Waste in a town may be understood both as a problem to solve, and as a valuable resource. In some Early Modern Swedish towns, waste bins and pits were common, varying in size and localization in different plots (some hidden, some in full view), but in other towns bins and pits were totally absent and waste was dispersed around the plot, with concentrations in specific locations. In some places, waste was probably removed from plots to use as fertilizer on nearby fields and gardens. These differences reflect different cultural behaviors and attitudes to waste and may tell us something about attitudes to the concept of modernity, to consumption, and to rural and agrarian practices in an urban setting. In this paper we will discuss waste handling in Early Modern towns in Sweden and present-day Finland (a part of Sweden until 1809) with these aspects in mind.

Cite this Record

Modernity in a Waste Bin; On Waste, Conspicuous Consumption and Agrarian Practices in the Swedish Early Modern Towns of Jönköping, Kalmar and Tornio.. Christina Rosén, Risto Nurmi, Timo Ylimaunu, Göran Tagesson. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England, U.K. 2013 ( tDAR id: 428540)

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Keywords

General
Consumption Towns Waste

Geographic Keywords
Sweden Western Europe

Temporal Keywords
Early modern

Spatial Coverage

min long: 11.113; min lat: 55.34 ; max long: 24.167; max lat: 69.06 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 530