Agreed, however not everyone looks at old stuff as having some positive value either .  My parents, who are European, are still appalled when I propose to buy anything second-hand.  It is even more pronounced when it is a 'personal' item such as clothing or eating utensils, even antiques.

To them there is not just a value judgement about how good the new modern fork is over the old fashioned late twentieth century version, but a real folk belief that second hand goods [intimate ones at least that are near the body etc] still carry some sort of aura of their former owners.  There has been a bunch of research done on this sort of non-scientific folk belief / understanding targeting attitudes to the transmission of infectius diseases, notably HIV in recent years.  The research clearly indicates that this is still a strong strand in our own behaviour patterns and the values we place on inanimate objects.

I think that this sort of cultural attitude can have just as strong an influence on decisions to discard versus other modes of transfer of material culture.  At the other extreme there are heirloom goods that have embodied positive values that are completely culturally derived from associations with family or others.

There were some papers that discussed wholesale household contents clearance and dumping as a quasi-religious phenomenon in, I think, the Paynter book on Archaeology of Inequality.  Maybe we should be looking more closely at less clearly expressed cultural values to explain some of this stuff too?

Denis

 

>>> [log in to unmask] 03/01 6:53 pm >>>
In a message dated 2/28/01 6:47:53 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< he idea of buying goods second hand seems to be noval to you all.  >>
You know, it is really dangerous to insert 21st century behaviors on 19th and
earlier century behaviors. Just because folks today have this notion of
antiques and nostalgia, does not mean folks in earlier times shared those
values.