No time to waste. Evidence for communal waste management among hunter-gatherer-fishers at Riņņukalns, Latvia (5400-3200 BC)

Abstract

This study discusses waste management by mid-Holocene hunter-gatherer-fisher communities at Riņņukalns, on the Salaca river in Latvia. It combines microscopic analyses with geochemistry and radiocarbon dating. We observe natural landscape changes and human responses, with Mesolithic and earlier Middle Neolithic occupation on the backswamp. During the later Middle Neolithic, we see a pattern of selective deposition of waste categories (food waste, combustion waste, and excrements) as part of collective waste management practices, which led to the formation of a shell midden. Analysis of these waste layers provides an alternative perspective on subsistence practices and craft activities. A dump of ochre production waste illustrates the burning of iron-rich sediments to obtain this pigment. These later Middle Neolithic hunter-gatherer-fisher communities had a collective approach to waste and waste management. The shell midden, which was also used for funerary rituals, can be regarded as a persistent and significant place in the landscape of these, perhaps not so mobile, communities.