About a decade ago our local council became environmentally conscious and
despite the resistance of older generations of residents, passed a law
banning rubbish burning and the use of incinerators.  However, being a
multicultural neighbourhood with a large percentage of people originating
from the Mediterranean, an important exception had to be written in to the
code: all outdoor burning is banned EXCEPT for the purposes of making
tomato sauce in late summer! (It must be a coincidence that the fumes
generated by the fires underneath the tomato pots smell like burning rubber
and worse!)  Even so, future archaeologists who uncover domestic ash piles
dating to the late 1980s/1990s could well be dealing with a very specific
activity and/or ethnicity indicator!

Cheers
Maddy

At 09:27 PM 8/08/00 -0400, you wrote:
>My grandparents in Lansing, MI used a burn barrel in their backyard (19th C
>neighborhood) as did most all their neighbors, up until the mid-1960's.
>The usual container was a 40 gal. steel barrel.  I don't recall what they
>did with the ashes and stuff that didn't burn completely.
>
>My current next-door-neighbor (20th C suburb in a rural area, Eagle MI)
>still burns his trash, as do many farmers out here.  (We thought our
>lawnmower shed was on fire the first time he burned).  He uses an old water
>heater tank to burn in.  Dumps the ashes on the leaf pile and the stuff
>that doesn't burn completely he dumps next to the tank.  Mostly bones and
>metal bits.
>
>Irene Henry
>
>