William Laurens Rathje (July 1, 1945 – May 24, 2012) was an American archaeologist. He was

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

, with a joint appointment with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, and was consulting professor of anthropological sciences at Stanford University.University of Arizona, Affiliated Faculty
accessed November 29, 2007 He was the longtime director of the

Tucson Garbage Project The Tucson Garbage Project is an archaeological and sociological study instituted in 1973 by Dr. William Rathje in the city of Tucson in the Southwestern American state of Arizona. This project is sometimes referred to as the "garbology project". ...

, which studied trends in discards by field research in

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

, and in

landfills A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

elsewhere, pioneering the field now known as

garbology Garbology is the study of modern refuse and trash as well as the use of trash cans, compactors and various types of trash can liners. As an academic discipline it was pioneered at the University of Arizona and long directed by William Rathje. The ...

. Rathje received his PhD in anthropology from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1971. His academic interests have been archaeology, early civilizations, modern material culture studies, and Mesoamerica. He first became known as director of the National Geographic-sponsored Cozumel Archaeological Project (Harvard/U of Arizona: Feb–June 1973) --which established Cozumel's significance as an Olmec and Mayan port of trade. With his students at the University of Arizona, Rathje began ''Le Projet du Garbàge'' in 1973, sorting waste at Tucson's landfill. Early results showed that Tucson residents discarded 10 per cent of the food they purchased and that middle-income households wasted more food than the poor or wealthy. He received the 1990 Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "his innovative contributions to public understanding of science and its societal impacts by demonstrating with his creative 'Garbage Project' how the scientific method can document problems and identify solutions."AAAS History & Archives
accessed November 29, 2007 Except for several years in the early 2000s, during his tenure at Stanford, Rathje lived in Tucson, Arizona.

Works

*''Lowland Classic Maya Socio-Political Organization Degree and Form Through Time and Space.'' Thesis (PhD), Harvard University, 1971 *''A Study of Changing Pre-Columbian Commercial Systems,'' with Jeremy A Sabloff and Judith G Connor, Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1975. *"Household Archaeology." with Richard R. Wilk, ''American Behavioral Scientist,'' 25. 6 (1982): 617–39. *''Household Refuse Analysis: theory, method, and applications in social science,'' with Cheryl K Ritenbaugh and Projet du Garbàge. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1984. OCLC 16674732 *''Household Garbage and the Role of Packaging: the United States/Mexico City household refuse comparison,'' with Michael D. Reilly and Wilson W. Hughes. Tucson, Ariz.: Solid Waste Council of the Paper Industry, 1985. OCLC: 40356239 *"Rubbish," ''Atlantic Monthly,'' (1989): 1–10. *"Once and Future Landfills," ''National Geographic,'' May 1991. *''Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage,'' New York: Harpercollins, 1992. *''Use Less Stuff: Environmentalism for Who We Really Are,'' with Robert M Lilienfeld, New York: Ballantine Pub. Group, 1998. *"The Perfume of Garbage: Modernity and the Archaeological." ''Modernism/Modernity.'' 11. 1 (2004): 61–83.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rathje, William 1945 births 2012 deaths American archaeologists Harvard University alumni University of Arizona faculty Stanford University Department of Anthropology faculty