Introduction

Making Ground: The Archaeology of Waste Landscapes

Authors

  • Jonathan Gardner Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
  • Jeffrey Benjamin Columbia University
  • Matt Edgeworth School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.25622

Keywords:

waste, waste landscapes, wastelands

Author Biographies

  • Jonathan Gardner, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh

    Jonathan Gardner is an archaeologist and heritage researcher whose work examines the traces of large-scale landscape change, most recently considering the creation of artificial terrain through landfilling and dumping and how this becomes a form of heritage and creative practice.

  • Jeffrey Benjamin, Columbia University

    Jeffrey Benjamin is an archaeologist and artist living and working in the Catskill Mountains of New York. His work is concerned with the sensory and emotive aspects of American industrialization. He holds a PhD in archaeology from Columbia University.

  • Matt Edgeworth, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester

    Matt Edgeworth is a British field archaeologist and author of Fluid Pasts: Archaeology of Flow (Bloomsbury Academic 2011) and Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice (Altamira 2006). He is Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, UK. 

References

Bangstad, T. R. 2022. “Toxic Heritage: Coal Tar, Care and Chemical Intimacies in Museum Housekeeping.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 9 (1): 121–138. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.21609

Breithoff, E. 2020. Conflict, Heritage and World-Making in the Chaco. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13xprzz

Burström, M. 2017. Ballast. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.

Byrne, D. 2017. “Remembering the Elizabeth Bay Reclamation and the Holocene Sunset in Sydney Harbour.” Environmental Humanities 9 (1): 40–59. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3829127

Çilingiroglu, Ç. and M. Albayrak. 2022. “To Burn the Blanket for a Flea: A Philosophical Response to Object-Oriented Archaeologies.” Archaeologies. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-022-09454-1

Cremin, D. 1999. Building Chicago’s Front Yard: Grant Park 1836 to 1936. PhD diss, Loyola University, Chicago.

De León, J. 2015. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oakland: University of California Press.

Dezhamkhooy, M. 2023. “Wandering Islands: Towards an Archaeology of Garbage-Based Settlements.” World Archaeology. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2023.2170910

Edgeworth, M. 2014. “The Relationship between Archaeological Stratigraphy and Artificial Ground and its Significance in the Anthropocene.” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 395 (1): 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1144/SP395.3

Farstadvoll, S. 2022. “A Thorny Past: The After-War Life, and Beyond, of Nazi World War II Barbed Wire in Norway.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 9 (1): 82–103. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.21640

Figura, R., D. Sosna and D. Henig. 2022. “Raven Polluters.” Anthropology News, 10 August. Online: https://www.anthropology-news.org/articles/raven-polluters/

Gibbard, P., A. Bauer, M. Edgeworth, W. Ruddiman, J. Gill, D. Merritts, S. Finney, L. Edwards, M. Walker, M. Maslin and E. Ellis. 2022. “A Practical Solution: The Anthropocene is a Geological Event, Not a Formal Epoch.” Episodes 45 (4): 349–357. https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2021/021029

Graff, R. 2020. Disposing of Modernity: The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism During Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813066493.001.0001

Harrison, R. 2021. “Rethinking the Futures of Heritage and Waste in the Anthropocene.” In Heritage Ecologies, edited by T. R. Bangstad and Þ. Pétursdóttir, 31–48. London: Routledge.

Hird, M. 2017. “Waste, Environmental Politics and Dis/Engaged Publics.” Theory, Culture & Society 34 (2–3): 187–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276414565717

Holtorf, C. and A. Högberg. 2016. “The Contemporary Archaeology of Nuclear Waste: Communicating with the Future.” Arkæologisk Forum 35: 31–37.

Joyce, R. 2020. The Future of Nuclear Waste: What Art and Archaeology Can Tell Us about Securing the World’s Most Hazardous Material. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190888138.001.0001

Kolen, J. and J. Renes. 2015. “Landscape Biographies: Key Issues.” In Landscape Biographies, edited by J. Kolen, J. Renes and R. Hermans, 21–48. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9789048517800-003

Kryder-Reid, E. and S. May, eds. 2023. Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003365259

Lawrence, S., P. Davies, G. Hil, I. Rutherfurd, J. Grove, J. Turnbull, E. Silvester, F. Colombi and M. Macklin. 2023. “Characterising Mine Wastes as Archaeological Landscapes.” Geoarchaeology. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.21958

Liboiron, M. and J. Lepawsky. 2022. Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12442.001.0001

Papoli-Yazdi, L. 2021. “The Archaeology of a Marginal Neighborhood in Tehran, Iran: Garbage, Class, and Identity.” World Archaeology 53 (3): 547–562. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2022.2036634

Pétursdóttir, Þ. 2020. “Anticipated Futures? Knowing the Heritage of Drift Matter.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 26 (1): 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2019.1620835

Quivik, F. 2013. “Editorial.” IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 39 (1–2): 2–3.

Rathje, W. and C. Murphy. 1992. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Reno, J. 2014. “Toward a New Theory of Waste: From ‘Matter out of Place’ to Signs of Life.” Theory, Culture & Society 31 (6): 3–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276413500999

Ross, S. and V. Angel. 2019. “Heritage and Waste: Introduction.” Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 10 (1): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHMSD-02-2020-116

Stewart, H. 2022. “The Ecological Life of Industrial Waste.” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 33 (1): 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/apaa.12159

Venovcevs, A. 2022. “Ambiguous Matter: The Life of Mine Waste.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 9 (1): 39–63. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.21645

Viney, W. 2015. Waste: A Philosophy of Things. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Downloads

Published

2023-10-25

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2023): Forum: Making Ground: The Archaeology of Waste Landscapes

Section

Forum

License

© Equinox Publishing Ltd.

For information regarding our Open Access policy, click here.

How to Cite

Gardner, J., Benjamin, J., & Edgeworth, M. (2023). Introduction: Making Ground: The Archaeology of Waste Landscapes. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 10(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.25622