This article addresses the issue of disposability in modern Anglo-American society, through a historical and archaeological perspective of late 19th- and 20th-century practices surrounding waste. S...

Disposability and Dispossession in the Twentieth Century

Each object has a lifespan in which it is made, transported, marketed, used, and discarded. Although the manufacturing date range for artifacts may be known, we should not equate the manufacturing range for an object type with the use range for a particular object. Studies from several locations indicate ceramic artifacts have lifespans of as much as 15 years and more in a household before being discarded. Ceramics can be poor sources for dating sites if used without considering the cultural contexts in which they are used, yet ceramics are the artifact class used most often in dating sites.

Dating Historical Sites: The Importance of Understanding Time Lag in the Acquisition, Curation, Use, and Disposal of Artifacts

The recycling of material culture today and during the Paleolithic

American temperance organizations of the mid-19th century stressed total abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, attributing to these substances an array of physically and morally damaging effects. These reformers deployed a rhetoric which was deeply rooted in middle-class American ideology, focusing their efforts on freeing impoverished, working-class, and immigrant groups from the bonds of addiction, demanding nothing less than total abstinence. Yet many middle-class partakers continued to smoke and drink in “moderate” amounts. The temperance movement became a locus for the exercise of class-based social control and opposition. Cultural, religious, and political agendas also animated the temperance debate and informed the philosophies of reformist institutions. The responses of diverse social groups to temperance reform are explored through an analysis of period documents and archaeological material from New York City and Lowell, Massachusetts, in order to explore the interplay of class formation, cultural and “racial” conflict, and religious ideology underlying reformist social movements.

“Free from all vicious habits”: Archaeological perspectives on class conflict and the rhetoric of temperance

This article investigates the practice of reuse, the relation between individuals and objects, using as a case study the refillable glass milk bottle. Based on interviews with 22 individuals in mainly rural settings, the study aims to understand what the milk bottle means today to the many people who still use it, and what the socioeconomic and other structures are that sustain this kind of product reuse. The discussion exposes the way that reuse is about both consumption and disposal and is maintained by a web of household practices, revealing the milk bottle as both a site of resistance to supermarkets and a site for the construction of collective and individual identities. We also expose the way that the materiality of the bottle enables myth and trust to be articulated. We conclude that this reuse practice is a form of non-market mediated exchange, marking reciprocal relations of care and trust.

A Sociology of Reuse: Deconstructing the Milk Bottle

Until recently, glass bottles were generally used more than one time. This study investigates customs of bottle reuse in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, with particular attention to the secondhand bottle business and returnable bottle systems. Effects of bottle-manufacturing machinery and reasons for the decline of bottle reuse are discussed. The implications of reuse for the analysis of bottles from archaeological sites are considered.

Jane Busch

Papers

Second time around: A look at bottle reuse