Tossed Cigarettes, Illegal Dumps, and Soiled Cardboard: An Archaeology of Illicit, Invisible, and Seldom-Studied Discard Phenomena in the Twenty-First Century

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Out-of-the-Box: Investigating the Edge of the Discipline" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology has long sought to distance itself from the present, and despite a small corpus of novel and seminal research emerging over the last four decades, an archaeology that addresses the contemporary has remained only on the fringes of the discipline. Highlighting recent investigations in which the anthropological lens is refocused on discard and material culture in the twenty-first century, this paper explores the ways that an archaeology of and for the contemporary can excite a deeper, more impactful engagement with the methods and analytic contributions of anthropological archaeology both within and beyond the academy. In particular, I focus on how the archaeological study of seldom-examined and backstage garbage-related phenomena opens anthropologically potent lines of inquiry into attitudes and behaviors inextricably linked to acts of discard: ideologies of dissent; involuntary dispossession; socially performative identity; liminal possession; sanctification of consumption; object atomization; and environmental toxicity. In turn, I argue that a more resonant archaeology of the contemporary capitalizes on the discipline’s unique strengths: assemblage-focused analyses; depositional context; spatial patterning; robust datasets; and systematic data recovery. Such resonance is realized in the fostering of positional reflexivity, the cultivation of empathy, and the connection of research products to present-day communities and challenges.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology Out-of-the-Box: Investigating the Edge of the Discipline   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23245