Main Goals & Objectives

In the last decades we have a continuous encouragement to ‘Τhink Green’ and to recycle, upcycle, reuse, reduce waste and repurpose a variety of objects, which could be called a ‘secondary use’ of materials. However, all these concepts and actions were nothing new to the ancient Greeks and to the pre-modern and modern traditional rural Greek communities, all of whom routinely reused and adapted numerous types of items and recycled many different materials. Metal objects including tools, vessels, and weapons were melted down to make new ones (including coins) while metal jewelry sheets were cut down to produce smaller artefacts; broken glass was melted down to produce new glass vessels and ornaments; various stone sculptures and blocks were incorporated into walls and thresholds or were carved out to produce basins and other utensils; and, finally, ceramics were reused, mended or not, in whole or in pieces (or even as crumbs), in numerous ways.

Moreover, recycling, readapting and reusing are practices not only restricted to objects and materials, but they are applicable to landscapes and concepts, since these practices have a deeper impact in human societies and cultures. The TRAASH Project aims at providing a diachronic outlook of recycling, reusing and re-adapting of the environment, materiality and ideas in a specific geographical area through the ages, from Antiquity to pre-modern and modern times. The Xanthi region in Thrace is selected as a case study for this analysis of refuse management because it is an area which allows a synchronous understanding of how all these practices were employed by various cultural groups in the past, such as the Greek colonists and the indigenous Thracians or, later, the pre-modern and modern rural communities which still depend mainly on agriculture and livestock.

The role of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens is very important in this framework. It has a very active research presence in this region with the intensive archaeological survey project under the direction of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi entitled ‘APAX: Archaeological Project of Abdera and Xanthi, 2015-2019’, conducting research in rural and upland parts of Xanthi, and studying areas that have been neglected for far too long. The diachronic analysis it had conducted has allowed the understanding of processes like the reusing/recycling of the landscape and of the materials by various cultural groups that sometimes coexisted or changed through time. The ethos of each group reveals the differences and similarities of landscape concept, economic exploitation, social cohesion, religious conduct and political conditions that provided the context in which such activities were performed. APAX has provided the initiative, a large amount of data and an established multi-expert collaboration, which will form the core of the TRAASH project.  TRAASH will allow us to join the experience and infrastructure of the University of Athens with those of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi, and with specialties of anthropologists, ethnoarchaeologists, technicians and artists. Thus, we will able to record, study, interpret and to harness the various (continuous, evolving or alternating) ways of exploiting and managing the objects, the landscape and the natural resources, which can provide a footprint of how distinct cultural groups acted through time.

The proposed project is an interdisciplinary synergy of experts from diverse backgrounds that aim to bring to the fore various dimensions of recycling and reuse in the past and present. This will be applied in a variety of aspects, which will include both the landscape as much as the material culture from the prehistory until present rural communities. For that purpose different disciplines will be engaged emphasising the diverse forms, uses and hermeneutics related with this subject. Thus, archaeology, anthropology, ethnography and artistic expression will be employed in this research process. The synthesis of the different outlooks will provide a unique and at the same time multi-vocal, as far as the disciplines are concerned, research output. Through this diverse study the various aspects of this theme will be emphasised in past and present rural societies that were developed in the area of Xanthi.

The use of archaeology will provide the main tool for understanding the ways in which recycling was practiced in the past. The diachronic analysis will provide a depth in understanding of how the landscape was used and exploited in various periods by diverse groups. Moreover, it will highlight the types and the way the material remains were reused, emphasising the social, economic and cultural conditions that existed in each period. The archaeological analysis will provide the temporal and spatial context in which the various processes will be comprehended.

            Anthropology will address the dialectics between past and present and at the same time it will allow an understanding of the trends that are active today in the area under study. Furthermore, the anthropological research will underline the role of recycling with past and contemporary analogies from various cultures and societies in the world. This will enrich our conceptualisation and analytical ability to interpret and understand past and present practices and beliefs associated with reuse and recycling.

            The application of ethnography is a way to approach current rural societies that follow more traditional practices. The current activities and their past within a limited chronological framework allow similar cultural, social and economic conditions to be observed. Their recycling related activities provide an insight into older ideas and techniques, and the way these are interwoven within the modern world. Furthermore, proposals of how they can be adjusted to help the current issues of recycling/reuse can be presented through this study.

            The artistic expression is another way to reveal the concerns artists have on the issue of recycling. The artistic sensitivity makes them often to bring into the fore issues that concern present societies. Through their work they both express their anxiety over the subject of recycling and at the same time they employ trash in their projects in order to produce or ‘re-produce’ art. Artists have been in the forefront on growing awareness of this social and cultural problem, their unique outlook will provide a great asset for the TRAASH project and a way to visualise-communicate this issue to a broader audience.

Another very strong dimension of the interdisciplinary synergy of TRAASH is the fact that it interrelates and combines diverse institutions and cultural areas. Thus, apart from the important academic and research aspects this proposed project has it also engages the local Ephorate and the public sector, the museums as dynamic spaces of cultural interaction, independent anthropological and ethnoarchaeological researchers, and artists. This synthetic and multivocal approach ensures a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue and an in-depth analysis of different dimensions of the specific research theme. Furthermore, the central goal of this project is the dissemination of knowledge acquired during this project (more details in section 3). This will be achieved by aiming on two levels the academic/research community and the broader public awareness. The first, will be achieved by the high academic and research profiles of the participants of this projects, which will ensure the highest quality of research outputs. The second, will be attained through the roles of dissemination the local Ephorate, the museum(s) and the artistic expression have to communicate the message of this project to a wider audience.

State of the Art

The study of ancient ‘garbage’ is a rather novel trend in Archaeology. The idea that garbage is a useful source of cultural information about the past (and may serve as a paradigm for the present) becomes more and more of a power; after all, in many sites of archeological digs we can discern areas of rubbish heaps or disposal pits. In fact, it is very common in archaeology to recover many pottery fragments, and scraps of stone or metal objects that were considered garbage even in the past. For some categories of finds it can be claimed that in museums what we really look at are just very old garbage! Meanwhile, recent studies of “object biography” suggest that it is important to consider not only the original purpose for which an artifact may have been made, but also the different ways that it may have been used through its lifetime. The modes and routes of their circulation, the changing value through the ages and the relation of certain objects with their owners diachronically add emotional, social, political or market value to them. For example when a work of art is sold apart from the painter and its date the genealogy of the owners is also provided, adding to its economic value. In a similar fashion the biography of weapons through their owners becomes an important reminder of their value in the 8^th century BC Iliad, despite the lack of coins or market value in the way it is conceived today. Heirlooms have similar characteristics only that the fact that they were old is preserved through memory and it is underlined in various ways. It is often the case that the social meaning and significance of these objects may change with the course of time, providing new interpretations about their character and importance, especially regarding their links with the past. Through the reuse of objects the role of the past, memory, social stability and change can be viewed and how this changed, re-interpreted or was manipulated by various groups can be observed.   

These different ‘lives of objects’ include the restorations, welds, modifications, adaptations, and sometimes even the concealment or the ‘curation’ (the retention of an artifact well beyond its production date) or the purposeful ‘destructions’ of objects. All these (and more) activities aim to prolong the social life of the object and make a new use of the material culture, either retaining its original meaning or incorporating different meanings and entailing, certain or radical, changes in its cultural perception and use. For example, in prehistoric and historic times it is often the case that in a broken ceramic sherd, which was part of a pot initially, a hole was made at its centre and it was reused as a loomweight. Thus, a part of a container vessel was transformed into an independent implement employed for the manufacture of textiles.

            The final deposition of objects is what we come across in our archaeological work. These include intentional or unintentional practices, whose meaning needs understanding and clarification. Traditional methods use the history of art as well as the ancient texts and inscriptions to interpret them. However, these tools are in many cases insufficient, especially when looking at objects from prehistoric periods, or objects related to geographical areas or with aspects of everyday life for which written sources are absent. In these cases, interpretative tools and observations from the disciplines of Ethnography, Ethnoarchaeology and Social Anthropology, which study the material and intangible culture of traditional and modern populations, are exploited. For instance, ‘The Garbage Project’ by the Northern Arizona University, (https://nau.edu/uploadedFiles/Academic/CAL/History/History-Social_Studies_Education/The Garbage Project.pdf), has shown that the study of garbage tells us about a population’s demographics and consuming habits, aspects that also come out from the study of archaeological contexts of deposition.

            Recent studies on ancient materiality emphatically emphasize the need for detailed and in-depth ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological research of the issue of secondary uses, to clarify aspects of the use and life of objects. Analogies and parallels can be used in archeology for those cultures sharing similar environments (natural and anthropogenous) and interact with their habitats in ways that are comparable to one another, in our case people who live in the region of Xanthi from the prehistoric to modern times.

            Moreover, the recent developments in the fields of Landscape Archaeology and Geographic Information Systems provide a new methodological and theoretical tool that can help us understand the different forms of landscape exploitation. The same location can have various or similar uses diachronically, an aspect that is directly linked with it synchronous socio-cultural conditions. The economic model, the routes of communication and the local resources are some of the important points that should be considered within this schema. This assessment can provide an overview of land exploitation and its relation with patterns of production and consumption on a regional scale. In a symbolic way special locales for the establishment of cult structures or cemeteries can be traced and the way they become meaningful for each period can be analysed. 

Finally, another interesting approach to garbage is offered by contemporary art. Trash Art, Found Art or Arte Povera focuses on the creative use of trash and found objects. Through the use of banal, ordinary, everyday materials (sometimes even real garbage) artists produce thought-provoking work which increases awareness of our decisions to consume and dispose of things. The collection of trash or found objects in any environment becomes the tool in the artists hand to create, allowing the artist’s voice to be heard and interact with the audience. The use and manipulation of ordinary objects and garbage can raise awareness. For example, the garbage produced from the passing of migrants from Asia or Africa to Europe have been turned into art pieces in order to call attention to this massive social, political, economic and cultural issue. Ai Weiwei has used life-jackets from refugees moving to the island of Lesbos in exhibitions at Berlin and Vienna. Memory, experience, the biography of the material and their symbolism are interwoven by the artist to put forwards a clear and understandable message to a wide audience. This sensibility and direct approach that the artists can have will be employed in the case of TRAASH as well in order to disseminate the issue of recycling and reuse to the broader public.    

Scientific, Economic and Social impact

The overall conceptualization and practice of recycling and reusing/readapting has a significant symbolic meaning with a strong cultural character. The unique diachronic analysis of all these aspects in the Xanthi region can provide a paradigm of environmental and material sustainability for present and future application in modern society. The wider public is expected to become aware, think, reflect, and generally approach the issue of ‘rubbish’ and rejection in general with regard to wider issues concerning the natural and cultural environment, individual and collective identities, the past, the present and the future. We are optimistic that the results of our research will inspire and urge other people (not just in Xanthi region) in the direction of developing, managing and supporting innovative activities related to re-use and recycle.

Research Methodology and Implementation

There will be an input from all specialized researchers on the form and special character data have from each discipline that will be collected during the TRAASH project. This will form a number of databases that will suit and serve each dataset collection strategy that is needed by each discipline and methodology applied in this project. For that reason a series of interrelated MS Access databases will be designed and implemented from the first stages of this project. The database will allow data entry of various types, which will gather information of various types. The data will come from literature review (excavation reports, APAX collected data, systematic publications in scientific journals, and monographs) landscape and material analysis from archaeologists, and autopsies and oral testimonies that will be collected by anthropologists and ethnographers. As data locales, sites, resources and objects of various materials (minerals, metals, glass, clay, paper, etc.) are considered often with traces of secondary use (perforated, repaired, welded, disassembled etc.), and non-material testimonies of older traditions and practices.

            The data analysis will follow through the visualization of information with the production of dispersal maps, graphs, statistical tables, plans and GIS maps, enriched by photographs. This process will allow the longitudinal and cross-sectional study of the dispersal or concentration of waste in space in areas (e.g. vast or distinct territories, simple pits or piles, scattered on the ground, in settlements or in the countryside, etc.) distinct from one another according to their form, structure and content. Part of the collected dataset will become available to a larger audience via an open access option in different stages of this project in order to disseminate primary data and knowledge.

            The quantitative and qualitative data assessment will be organized into four areas of research query: (1) the first will be related to rejection trends (kinds of objects, types of regions), (2) the second is associated with rejection intensities (the frequency with which something is discarded in space), (3) the third is considering the size of rejection (extent of the phenomenon of rejection of objects in one or more regions), and (4) the fourth is related to the rejection perception (i.e. if all of the above suggests the existence of a specific, positive or negative, perception of the secondary use of objects in one or more regions or periods).

            These four (4) fields of research inquiry will be interpreted in the context of their contemporary social, political and economic circumstances, and religious beliefs. Apart from quantifiable, and qualitative evidence concerning the landscape and material remains, other sources of data will be sought. The ancient sources, inscriptions and iconographic testimonies, as well as modern ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological studies of the region will contribute to the interpretative approach. However, these will not be adopted without critique; instead they will be compared to the regionally available evidence. This process will reveal links or separations, continuities and discontinuities, and more generally a dialectic between the uses and meanings of the objects from one period to the next. At the same time, the collective analysis of the available evidence will provide a picture of the range of secondary uses both in cross-section and perhaps among contemporary but distinct cultural groups, such as the Greek colonists and the indigenous Thracians, and over time in the region of Xanthi.

Furthermore, the collection strategy of anthropological and ethnographic data will follow the protocols of proper conduct, avoiding any form of offence or data exposure on behalf of the people under study. Copyright laws will be applied in all cases it is necessary to implement them. The same applies for the artistic outcomes, which will be independent and original forms of art designed within the framework of the TRAASH project.

Deliverables

TRAASH research results will be presented in one (1) collective volume, where the various aspects of this project will be published together. There will also be four (4) collective papers in Greek and international scientific conferences in order to disseminate this subject to a broader academic community. TRAASH will also provide four (4) publications in international scientific journals, proving that this project and the researchers involved in it are at the highest academic caliber. Additionally, one (1) doctoral dissertation will also be among the deliverables of TRAASH. Through all these outputs there will be proposal for modern recycling and reuse strategies based on past concepts, experiences and techniques. 

   Research results will be made electronically available to the wider public via the web site (traash.arch.uoa.gr) as well as social network pages (Facebook, Tweeter). Moreover, brochures, educational activities and modern art exhibition (Trash Art) will be carried out in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi at the Archaeological Museum of Abdera on the subject: ‘We are what we (do not) throw away’.

Abstract

Project's Extensive Synopsis

Research Team - Brief Bios

Selected References