London ( CNN ) -- We may not immediately equate the activities of archaeologists to trash sifting . Or imagine that the glass-encased artifacts in museums might be one-time refuse . But quite often , this is exactly the case . Studying ancient trash from around the world gives archaeologists and historians the chance to understand the habits that defined people 's daily lives , said Dr. Richard Meadow , Director of the Peabody Museum 's Zooarchaeology Laboratory and Senior Lecturer on Anthropology at Harvard University . It may not be glamorous but , he said , `` much of what archaeology knows about the past comes from trash , if trash is defined as the products of human consumption . Trash is a proxy for human behavior . '' The Peabody Museum is staging a series of talks and events , entitled Trash Talk : The Anthropology of Waste until Spring 2012 , on the importance of trash to our understanding of human behavior , both in the past and now . Meadow , who has excavated sites including the ancient Indus city of Harappa in present-day Pakistan , has gleaned much from studying centuries-old trash . Early dumping grounds , or `` middens , '' are often archaeological and anthropological gold-mines , he said , not just for what can be found there but for what they tell us about ancient civilizations , what they consumed and how they organized their urban space to deal with their waste . `` The way that ancient cities used to grow and change through time is actually very much related to the evolution of trash , '' Meadow explained . Ancient people , he said , quite literally lived with their trash , usually dumping it in the streets outside their homes when it was n't collected and deposited in special pits . Sometimes , he said , whole cities would be filled with trash , to the point where the street levels would rise , submerging homes and forcing people to build on top of it . While this might sound revolting and unhygienic to us now , ancient peoples , said Meadow , became acclimatized to it . And they were at least adept at recycling their trash . `` I think almost all civilizations recycled in one way or another , '' Meadow said , explaining that ancient peoples across the world would recycle organic matter as fuel , while inorganic refuse would be used to build the foundations of a house . Precious metals , he said , would be melted down and re-shaped for a variety of tools . `` It 's only when you get to the modern period of consumerism that you get this culture of obsolescence , '' he said . Dr. Jose Remesal Rodriguez is a professor of Ancient History at the University of Barcelona and an expert in the social and economic history of the Roman Empire , with a special interest in the production and trade of food in the ancient world . He is the director of excavations at an ancient dump site in Rome called Monte Testaccio . An artificial hill composed of more than 25 million discarded Roman amphorae -- or vase-shaped containers -- it tells us much about the ancient Roman trade in olive oil , which these amphorae were used to transport . `` A dump can be a particularly interesting source ( for finding out ) about the daily life ( and ) development of the civilization that created it , '' said Remesal . From the shards found at Monte Testaccio , he said , archaeologists were able to trace the evolution of food policy in the Roman Empire . `` Testaccio is a very special dump , which gives us information about a concrete product -- olive oil -- and the relations between the capital of the Empire and one of its provinces , '' Remesal explained . This prizing of ancient trash may seem at odds with our attitudes to waste today . But according to Meadow , scientists are already at work studying our trash and what it says about us . He cites as an example American archaeologist William Rathje , director of the `` Garbage Project '' in Arizona , which has sifted through and studied garbage from 1973 to the present day . `` Some amazing statistics have come out of this -- how much food gets thrown out in the trash that was probably OK to eat , and other things hardly used that were thrown away , '' said Meadow . `` It 's an incredible array of material , '' he concluded . Dr Richard Meadow will give a lecture entitled 'The archaeologist 's view of trash ' at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology on October 6 .
Ancient trash is an important resource for archaeologists . Trash pits or ` ` middens '' tell us much about the daily life of our forebears , according to archaeologists . The Museum is staging a series of lectures about the importance of trash to archaeology . Scientists are studying our trash right now to find out what it reveals about our past .