In Danish, we speak of « chick courage », literally a “kitchen dump”. Because it is indeed the remains of meals, some 7,000 years old, that archaeologists have unearthed on the beaches of Denmark. Strata of oyster shells, mussels, but also fish bones and seabird bones, left there by distant Mesolithic ancestors. The archaeological equivalent of the soda bottle that pollutes the beaches.
“Depending on the region of the world, these remains can be mixed with pieces of ceramics, remains of habitats or other, describes Nathalie Serrand, archaeologist at the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) and specialist in shell middens. This tells us about how past populations exploited their territory and its resources. »
Shell middens all over the world
The dumps of the so-called Danish “Eterbolle” culture are not unique. On all the coastlines, from Canada to Japan via Senegal, archaeologists examine these strata, which attest to past presences. In the Caribbean, the pre-Columbian populations, present as early as 5000 BC, left large quantities of shells, both food and raw materials for tools and ornaments. In France, there are shell mounds in Brittany, on the sites of Téviec and Beg-er-Vil for example.
But how can we be sure that these are human dumps and not natural deposits? “We see fracturing to open the shells or traces of cooking fires”, justifies Nathalie Serrand. In fact, shells and bones keep very well over the centuries, unlike other food waste. “Everything organic, such as plants, paper, skins, does not fossilize, recalls Laurent Olivier, chief curator at the National Archeology Museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. We have therefore lost many traces of the first hunter-gatherer societies. »
Waste or reusable residue?
With the Neolithic and sedentarization, humans developed ceramics. The jars promote conservation, and food scraps can finally survive the ages. “This waste sheds light on the little domestic history of everyday life”, underlines Thierry Bonnot, anthropologist at the CNRS. “Ruins of a building are all very well, but you have to study the waste to know if it was the baker’s house or the tanner’s house”, summarizes Laurent Olivier.
Because even if the current period is often decried as the era of the “poubellien”, humanity did not wait for the modern world to produce waste. “As early as the Middle Ages, we see that small daily ceramics were discarded when they presented a defect, notes Thierry Bonnot. But in the past, waste was recyclable and recycled, if only as rubble for construction or, for organic waste, as fertilizer for agriculture. »
“The term “waste” emerged rather in the 19e century ; before we spoke of “residues of activity”, decrypts Baptiste Monsaingeon, sociologist and author of A broken man (1). In Antiquity, people were devoted to the recovery of putrescible waste for agriculture, for example. » With advances in medicine and hygiene, waste is becoming undesirable on a daily basis.
Scavenging Tucson residents
However, even today, scavenging provides information on consumer habits! One of the most important works of its kind took place from 1973 to 2005 in the city of Tucson, USA. It involved collecting waste from the inhabitants, then analyzing it according to neighborhoods, the composition of households, income and economic periods. The project, archaeological in its conception and sociological in its results, has made it possible to observe the differences between reality and narrative.
The waste of meat, which one might think limited in times of crisis, turned out to be more important during a recession for example, with more meat thrown away than in normal times. Could the fault be excessive purchases? Another example, the inhabitants tended to declare half as much alcohol as what they actually consumed. Results that hardly surprise Laurent Olivier. “There is a big difference between the traces that people want to leave of themselves, on their own initiative, and those that they leave unknowingly, beyond speech, confirms the one who is both archaeologist and historian. History looks at what people said, and archeology looks at what they did. »
Chicken bones and plastic packaging
As such, “food waste represents an important and particular field of archeology”, recalls Nathalie Serrand. And in 300, 500 years? What will archaeologists of the future find in our contemporary period? What will they deduce about our eating habits? In 2018, geographers and archaeologists published an article wondering if chicken bones will not be the future shell middens, as humanity consumes the bird everywhere across the globe.
“We would mainly find packaging rather than bones, because our food is very processed”, believes Laurent Olivier. For Baptiste Monsaingeon, “plastics will be the archaeological and geological marker of our civilisation”. “It will be up to history to decide whether the car, the aluminum can or the cell phone will symbolize our time, smiles Thierry Bonnot. But I hope that these are not the only traces that we will leave in the history of humanity! »
———-
10 million tons of wasted food
342 million tonnes of waste were produced in France in 2018, according to the latest figures available from Ademe.
10 million tons of food products are lost or wasted every year in France,
at all levels, from the field to the consumer’s fridge.
A third of food waste takes place at the consumer level, another third at the production level. The remaining third concerns transformation processes
and distribution channels.
As of December 31, 2023, all territories will have to carry out separate collection of household bio-waste.