What was “trash” in 17th-century New Amsterdam? Who tossed it? Where was it tossed? Who collected or neglected it? How did trash change the shape and shoreline of Mannahatta? What do anthropologists and archeologists make of 400-year-old shards and bones? How does the debris help interpret the story of old New Amsterdam and today’s New York? “We walk on our own history,” Robin Nagle reminds us.

Join Robin Nagle, Anthropologist-in-Residence at the NYC Department of Sanitation and Clinical Professor in Liberal Studies at NYU, and Michael T. Lucas, Curator of Historical Archeology, New York State Museum, as they help us sort through the trash.