The Garbage Crisis in prehistory: artefact discard patterns at the Early Natufian site of Wadi Hammeh 27 and the origins of household refuse disposal strategies

Abstract

Concepts of refuse behavior and site abandonment have been developed that show potential to distinguish degrees of mobility and sedentism among past human communities. Whereas much of this work had been conducted in ethnographic situations or on recent sites, this study makes an initial attempt to apply this body of theory to the archaeological record of humanity's most fundamental settlement transition: from mobile hunter-gatherer to settled village farmer. The centerpiece of the study is an analysis of artefact distribution patterns in the Natufian site of Wadi Hammeh 27 (ca. 12,000 years BP), which is combined with a diachronic overview of data from earlier and later sites, dating from 20,000 to 8000 years BP. We conclude that human communities in the Natufian period had not yet tailored their indifferent household refuse disposal practices to the long-term requirements of sedentary living. Subsequently, there occurs a punctuated gradient of change in the Levantine sequence, towards higher rates of secondary refuse disposal. Elementary efforts at refuse disposal begin in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (ca. 10,300–9200 years BP), and some form of consistent garbage cycling was probably a standard feature in many villages by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (ca. 9200–8000 years BP).