Archaeologists Uncover Disturbing Amount of Plastic Waste at Iron Age Site
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Godzilla-themed thermos wrapper: One of over 2,000 waste items found at the Castell Henllys site. (Image: H. Mytum et al., 2021/Antiquity)
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One by one, the archaeologists stumbled upon pieces of junk. Using techniques typically reserved for documenting stone tools and bones, the team recorded such items as plastic spoons, eye glasses, bottle caps, straws, mobile phone batteries, paint can lids, candy wrappers, and plastic wrap. By the time the experiment was over, the archaeologists had uncovered nearly 3,000 items, the vast majority of them made of plastic.
TORONTO When a group of archeologists excavated reconstructed Iron Age roundhouses that had been used in historical reenactments in Wales for more than 30 years, they expected to learn about the decay processes of these structures. What they didn’t expect was to discover so much plastic. More than 2,300 individual pieces of plastic candy wrappers, straws, a Motorola phone battery, etc. were found in the ground by archeologists excavating the reconstruction sites. The Plastic Age encroaching on the Iron Age. A paper published in the journal Antiquity this week dives into the finds, as well as the implications for what future archeological digs could look like, given the ubiquity of plastic in our society today.
Plastic waste found by archaeologists at Pembrokeshire hill-fort
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image copyrightUniversity of Liverpool
image captionWrappers from well known chocolate bars and snacks were among 2,000 items found trampled into the ground
It was not what archaeologists at an ancient Welsh hill-fort expected to find - a mountain of plastic.
Academics uncovered more than 2,000 items at the Castell Henllys site in Pembrokeshire.
But these were not ancient artefacts - they were discarded food wrappers and bottle tops from old school lunches.
University of Liverpool researchers said future archaeologists may now well refer to our modern times as the Plastic Age.
The discoveries were made by a team led by Harold Mytum, and their findings published in the academic journal Antiquity.
The new study published in the journal
Antiquity explains that Castell Henllys is a well-excavated hillfort in Wales which dates back to the late first millennium BC, in the Iron Age. In the 1980s, two experimental reconstructions of Iron Age roundhouses were built at the site. They were built on top of the locations of real Iron Age roundhouses and their construction was based on archaeological evidence recovered from the site.
Castell Henllys. A view showing the entrance to one of the completed round houses in 1988. (Malcolm Neal/
)
The roundhouses have been key features of the heritage site, but health and safety concerns ordered that they could not simply be refurbished after 30 years, the roundhouse replicas had to be dismantled and rebuilt. In 2017/2018, the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park called in researchers to excavate the dismantled roundhouses. Originally, the archaeologists were interested in investigating the remains of the reconstructed Iron Age roundho
| UPDATED: 15:10, Fri, Jan 8, 2021
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The archaeological disaster was uncovered by a team from the University of Liverpool at Castell Henlyss in The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, southwest Wales. Castell Henlyss is one of Britain s most iconic archaeological sites and open-air museums that allows visitors to walk among meticulously reconstructed Iron Age roundhouses - exactly as they stood some 2,000 years ago. The site was built in the 1980s using the same materials and techniques Castell Henlyss s ancient residents would have used