Trash in the Streets: What, Pompeii Worry?

The citizens of Pompeii were into trash. Well, at least they weren't averse to having it around.

That's a new hypothesis to explain why archaeologists have found so much rubbish in and around the tombs of Pompeii, the city that was hastily buried under a volcanic eruption in 79 A.D. 

The prevailing theory is that an earthquake 17 years earlier had left the city awash in rubble, but more recent findings have convinced one archaeologist of a new theory: that the city just didn't have a good waste management system. 

Evidence supporting this theory is found in the scads of rubbish found among the rubble alongside houses, businesses, and common areas — not just alongside tombs. So the Pompeiians had their trash just like everybody else, except that they didn't go to great lengths to get rid of it, at least not in the years immediately before the Vesuvian eruption.

Archaeologists have found a large trash heap outside the city walls. (That would seem to be the logical place for it.) But they have also made careful note of garbage pits — containing animal bones, food waste, and broken pottery — right alongside houses and even right alongside water storage cisterns. Clearly, these people didn't worry too much about scavenging animals or bacterial infections.

Moreso, these people didn't think of tombs as the kind of sacred places that we do today, judging by the presence of not only heaps of rubbish in and around the burial places but also the preponderance of graffiti right on the tomb outside walls. Respect for the dead indeed!

So if they didn't worry about it, why should we? Well, for starters, we today produce a lot more rubbish than the residents of Pompeii ever did — like every in the history of the city, even if its occupation stretches back a few thousand years. They didn't have plastic packaging, after all, which doesn't break down easily no matter how many pieces it is shattered into eventually. We also have slightly more knowledge of what happens if trash is left in homes or public places too long. 

Still, we today leave a lot of trash lying around. If one of our cities disappeared after a violent natural event (and some of them have, in recent times), what sort of clues to rubbish disposal would future archaeologists find? We today are shaping the middens of tomorrow. We might want to get our houses in order before criticizing those who lived before us.