Did the Ancient Pompeiians Invent Recycling? New Research Suggests They Used Trash to Build City Walls (and Much More)

In a stunning development, archaeologists working at Pompeii,
the city famously destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79
AD, now believe that artifacts found among the ruins indicate that
ancient Romans were recycling their trash—and making a profit from
their endeavors.

Allison Emmerson, a classics professor at Tulane University,
says that piles of garbage found outside the city’s walls
and amid tombs on Pompeii’s outskirts, long believed to be
simple refuse, were in fact “staging grounds” for reusable
materials, according to the Guardian.

Working with excavators from the University of Cincinnati,
Emmerson and fellow archaeologists Steven Ellis and Kevin Dicus
began examining the structural foundations of the city. They found
that the walls contained discarded tiles, shards of broken pottery,
and other reused materials that were plastered over to created a
clean, uniform surface.

These fragments contained traces of the same sandy soil found in
rubbish piles outside the city, indicating that trash was regularly
sorted and resold to be used inside city walls.

Sifting through the trash was a profitable endeavor: wood and
bones could be used for carvings, and wood was reusable as fuel.
Glass and metals could be melted down, and broken ceramics ground
into powder for plaster, mortars, or new ceramics. Amphorae, large
ceramic jugs that stored wine, could be reused in numerous ways,
including as part of drainage systems.

“Romans reused and recycled just about everything,” Emmerson
told Artnet News in an email. “Recycling and reuse are natural
human behaviors. For as long as humans have been using tools, we’ve
also been recycling and reusing them.”

But Roman attitudes toward trash were very different than our
own. Today, we are primarily motivated by the goal of removing
waste and ideally eliminating it from our homes and
communities.

“Pompeii’s waste-management system was guided by a different
priority: that garbage be collected for reuse,” Emmerson said. “The
Pompeiians recognized that when gathered in large enough
quantities, waste became a valuable commodity. What made the system
work was their willingness to live far closer to their refuse than
many of us would consider acceptable today.”

“Romans lacked a full grasp of the public health dangers that
could arise from waste, but even so, I don’t think we should view
Pompeii and other Roman cities as repulsive urban hellscapes,” she
added. “I think Pompeiians were more comfortable with the presence
of garbage than we are because they were used to it.”

Archaeologists encountered Pompeii’s ancient refuse during the
very first excavations on the site, in the 18th century, but long
considered it of little historical value. Emerson’s research, which
challenegs that account, will be collected in her new
book, Life and Death in the
Roman Suburb, to be published next month by Oxford
University Press.

The post Did the Ancient Pompeiians Invent Recycling? New
Research Suggests They Used Trash to Build City Walls (and Much
More) appeared first on artnet News.