Look at the Down in the Dumps guidance doc from the AZ SHPO office for some ideas and references.

----- Original Message -----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Fri Aug 12 08:36:13 2011
Subject: Talkin' Trash

Greetings,

I'd like the group's thoughts on a small dilemma I'm having. I'm 
investigating a series of Cold War era (early 1960s) missile 
ballistic missile sites in New Mexico. To date, our site 
investigations have found no ground evidence of trash dumps and the 
site plans make no references to such. Likewise, the site histories 
also make no reference to trash collection services. So, where did 
the trash go? Obviously, if we could locate any site local dumps it 
could be a gold mine of data. Now given the specific site, I realize 
that no one may had the have exact answer, but I do have a couple 
general questions that the group may be able to shed some light upon.

First, is anyone aware of any semi-seminal works on the history of 
solid waste management in the United States? I've found Lanier 
Hickman's American Alchemy: The History of Solid Waste Management in 
the United States, but it focuses mostly on urban efforts and the 
rise of recycling, and Rathje and  Murphy's Rubbish! The Archaeology 
of Garbage to be insightful, but not completely. The site I'm working 
is really rural and annexed to a small New Mexico town.

Now I'm actually old enough to actually remember a time when trash 
collection in rural areas did not exist and I'm sure it varied from 
town to town with the enactment of federal waste management laws in 
the mid-1960s, but I've not yet found anything that really documents 
this paradigm shift from home or local dumps to municipal waste 
processing as it relates to archaeology. Maybe such a single 
historical work (or works) simply doesn't exist? But maybe others 
have pondered this dilemma before?

The second question is aimed at those of you who may have some 20th 
Century military experience or at least more experience than I with 
the archaeology of US military sites. How is trash generally handled 
in the military? Did bases normally (in my case Walker Air Force 
base) have their own trash collection services? Perhaps they 
incinerated what they could and sent the rest to a dump? The trash 
had to go somewhere.

Obviously, much more archive and library work on this topic is in my 
future, but any thoughts you folks might have on this will be most 
welcome.

Thanks,

Todd Hanson
-- 
Todd A. Hanson, Ph.D.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
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