Archeology Of Homelessness

No matter what you see in the movies, archaeology isn't really about finding ancient temples or golden idols. It's about the day-to-day "stuff"— the material culture—of people's lives. It doesn't even have to be ancient, as a study of homeless peoples' stuff in Indianapolis is showing.  Larry J. Zimmerman, Ph.D., an Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis professor of anthropology and museum studies at the School of Liberal Arts and Jessica Welch, an IUPUI student and a formerly homeless woman, have completed a unique study of the material culture of the homeless. The researchers discovered that the problem of homelessness is broader and much more complex than previously thought. For this study, Zimmerman and Welch focused on sites near downtown Indianapolis where homeless sought outdoor shelter.  They located camps – many of them in use for long periods of time – where the homeless found or created shelter. They photographed these sites and conducted inventories of what the homeless threw away or left behind when they were away from the camp. They looked for patterns or clusters of certain types of materials such as clothing, shoes, food, cardboard laid out as furniture, or tarps providing shelter. Some of their findings and even what they did not find surprised them. "We found a large number of food cans. Most had been opened, often not very successfully, with knives or by banging them against rocks or even by heating them until the contents exploded. We rarely found cans that had been opened by a can opener. That made us realize that they didn't have can openers, which must have been very frustrating to them," said Zimmerman. "We also found a lot of hotel-size bottles of shampoo and conditioner, deodorant and toothpaste. Only the toothpaste was used. This tells us that giving things like shampoo and conditioner to individuals without access to water doesn't make sense. It would be better to send these kinds of things to shelters and not distribute then to people living on the streets. When we try to deliver aid to the homeless we tend to give them what we think they need. A much better way to deliver aid is to target what they actually need, and our work on the material culture of the homeless may help us find out what that really is," said Zimmerman.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081124130956.htm