Dirty bottles in a bucket
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The Secret Life of Landfill: A Rubbish History

16 August 2018

Ninety-minute documentary on the throwaway society, including our dig on an 1890s rubbish dump in Great Yarmouth.

 

An array of broken ceramics and bottles
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Finding beauty in rubbish

24 January 2017

“From the beginning of time, the things that people threw away included ceramic items, bones and ashes from fires,” says Dr Tom Licence, director of the Centre of East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia, England.

Men scouring a rubbish dump
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BBC World Service – The Forum, Talking Rubbish: Clever Ways with Waste

13 June 2016

Advice from a garbologist, a waste expert and a taxidermist about re-using waste

Tom searches through the finds
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Digging Up The Roots Of Modern Waste In Victorian-Era Rubbish : Parallels : NPR

1 June 2016

Some archaeologists excavate Roman ruins. Others dig up garbage. In England, a project is underway to study what people threw out in Victorian times, to learn about the start of the consumer era.

Ellen Hale's Heal-All Ointment Pot Lid
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Digging Through Victorian Trash for Bone Toothbrushes and Broken Dolls

18 March 2016

“Trash tells stories the history books don’t, particularly about the lives of ordinary people,” Licence told Hyperallergic.

Three Dundee Marmalade Jars
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‘What the Victorians Threw Away’ Catalogs Victorian-Era Trash – CityLab

15 March 2016

A researcher aims to uncover what nineteenth-century garbage says about historical—and contemporary—waste.

Items featured in the What The Victorians Threw Away database
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Meet the Team of Academic Dumpster Divers Investigating Victorian Garbage | Mental Floss UK

14 March 2016

You can tell a lot about a person from their garbage. Dr. Tom Licence of the University of East Anglia is putting an academic spin on that concept—rummaging through the rubbish of Victorians to find out how they lived and who they were.

Dirty bottles in a bucket
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King’s Lynn archaeologists uncover Victorian rubbish

26 October 2015

Rubbish dumped during the Victorian period has been uncovered in Norfolk by a group of archaeologists. They have excavated a former town rubbish dump and the site of a former incinerator in King’s Lynn.