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Pull-Top Can Tabs, At 50, Reach Historic Archaeological Status
New submitter kuhnto writes A simple relic of 20th century life has taken on new meaning for archaeologists: The ring-tab beer can — first introduced 50 years ago — is now considered an historic-era artifact, a designation that bestows new significance on the old aluminum cans and their distinctive tabs that are still found across the country.
Seems that there are a more ubiquitous items we could designate? Why a form of pollution?
This TOTALLY matters.
Only in America could something only 50 years old be considered an "historic" artefact, archaeologically.
That's the 1960's, people. Elsewhere, it's not even considered antique unless it's from 1915 or before. And, to be honest, there's an awful lot of stuff that's "antique" that's worthless. My house would basically qualify as antique and it just a normal suburban semi.
This is what happens when you have only 500 years of recorded history and ignore anything that happened before then.
I watched Time Team once, where they do an archaeological dig live on TV, The American episode was so dull because they basically couldn't touch anything. All the "history" was the top inch of soil. Over here in the UK, if it doesn't involve a six-foot-deep trench, you're not even getting past the modern rubbish into the proper archaeology.
Ring-pulls aren't historical. They may be old, they may even be collectable, they may be something worth remembering for later years, but they're not historical. There's a bakelite museum I know of - fabulous place. Some of the stuff in there is antique, or damn close to the definition. But it's still just plastic. Nice to visit with the kids to show them how things used to be but hardly a point in history worth noting beyond casual interest.
On the flip-side, I know a guy in Italy who goes through the Alps with a metal detector and still runs across first-world-war bodies, still with all their equipment intact. He has his own museum (and is properly licensed to do that, I'd like to point out). Even that is stuff nearly twice as old as this and of vital historical importance.
Ring-pulls are still in my memory from being a kid 20 years ago. They aren't historical. Give it 50 years and maybe. But if they are "historical artefacts", then things like cassettes have been for years too.
..but the real historical question with respect to cans....who the fuck won the rock-a-rolla Cola Wars?
As a metal detector user my historic artifact to junk ratio is going to get quite the boost...
A simple relic of 20th century life has taken on new meaning for archaeologists: The ring-tab beer can — first introduced 50 years ago — is now considered an historic-era artifact, a designation that bestows new significance on the old aluminum cans and their distinctive tabs that are still found across the country.
Like people, things don't suddenly become more important or interesting just because they turned 50.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
> UK is in Europe.
But I hear that's being fixed.
Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078
Dear Sir:
Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled "211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:
1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:
A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.
B. Clams don't have teeth.
It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in it's normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.
However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.
Yours in Science,
Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities
An American tourist visits my city Athens, Greece. He gets a taxi from the airport and asks a ride to his hotel. Trying to be hospitable, every time near some historic landmark the taxi driver described it with few fact, but the tourist always responded with an unimpressed "that's nothing for us in the States, we can build that in few days" - while passing the Parthenon the tourist ask about it and the taxi driver responds: "i don't anything about it, yesterday i was here but that thing did not existed...''.
Aluminum Cans The guy actually opens some vintage pull-tab cans... for SCIENCE!
The Hackaday article that video was linked from
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Keep in mind that these were thrown into holes (some deep) as well as left on the surface. Replacing some posts a few summers back, I ran into a lot of these with the beer cans they came from.
"bestows new significance on the old aluminum cans"
I'm not sure that those ALUMINUM pull rings are fifty years old. Steel, yes, I suppose so. They've been around for most of my life. I remember people still used can openers to open their sodas and beers when I was a kid, sometime around 9 to 12 years old, I started seeing pull rings. But, the macho men and the big kids were still crushing their empty cans to demonstrate how many muscles they had between their ears. Aluminum cans became a thing when I was already a teen.
Or, maybe memory serves me poorly. Actually, I think that soda was still marketed in bottles until I was a teen. It was just the beer drinkers who had those pull rings. But I'm quite sure that I saw no aluminum cans until around '67, '68, or maybe even a little later.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So by inference, Jimmy Buffet (Margaritus Flipfloppus) is now archeologically significant as well.
Here's a video on the design and manufacture of beverage cans, which includes descriptions of how cans have been opened for use.
http://www.tested.com/tech/522084-how-and-why-aluminum-cans/
Only in America could something only 50 years old be considered an "historic" artefact, archaeologically.
Only people who lack comprehension of history would be so arrogant as to think something has to pass an arbitrarily long age to be of historic interest. I used to own an auction company so I've been a dealer in historic artifacts. Some stuff is historically interesting even though it isn't very old. Other stuff is very old and of very little historical interest or significance.
That's the 1960's, people. Elsewhere, it's not even considered antique unless it's from 1915 or before
The word antique has no specific connotation of date or time. It simply means old. The exact date is irrelevant.
This is what happens when you have only 500 years of recorded history and ignore anything that happened before then.
Oh well I guess we should all feel inferior because our history wasn't written down as well on this side of the pond. [/sarcasm] People were here 20,000+ years ago and it doesn't get ignored. We simply don't know as much about them because there is less data available. Go study the Mayan ruins or Cahokia mounds and then tell us again how there is nothing of archeological interest over here.
I watched Time Team once, where they do an archaeological dig live on TV, The American episode was so dull because they basically couldn't touch anything. All the "history" was the top inch of soil.
Then they were digging in the wrong place. There are tens of thousands of years of history here if you actually know what you are doing and where to look.
Those old pull tab cans were steel.
Give me a break, it's not hard to date American campgrounds. The whole damn country is less than 250 years old. You guys act like we're carbon dating shit here.
We ARE carbon dating things on this side of the pond. American history goes back WAY before Columbus wandered across the Atlantic.
The United States as a nation-state may not go back quite as far as some European countries but only a racist idiot would think that history is just the documented history of white people of European heritage. People have been in the Americas for 20,000+ years. And the United Kingdom as we know it today is barely older than the USA so don't get so high and might about how deep European history is.
Even that is stuff nearly twice as old as this and of vital historical importance.
How so?
I mean, ignoring the 'died in a war' bit, because human remains are always going to be of more importance than human trash.
Perhaps if we had American kleptomania involved in the old days, we'd have nice museums of everything and wouldn't need to go digging through the Alps for things of historical importance.
On the Harbin 500ml beer cans in China there's still an oldskool tab. Hah. I remember those when I was a kid in the early 80's, you could break it in two parts and then shoot the ring away.
But this article specifically mentions beer tabs, which just turned 50 years old, and have nothing to do with the Native Americans. Unless I'm missing something here...
You're missing the fact that someone used the fact that pull tabs aren't actually terribly old to get in an irrelevant troll about how the USA isn't that old itself compared with Europe, conveniently forgetting that the history of the Americas goes way back before Europeans got involved.
This is one of my favourite posts in recent memory, kudos!
that's quite funny, considering that such cans are still very common here in China - remember, China is the future! ;)
Where you needed to punch a small hole on one side and a large hole on the other. They were tin cans for soda and beer.
since you don't seem to be able to figure out that people have been having campsites as long as they have been people.
They all went to China. Beers, sodas, juice drinks - so many use disposable pull tab tops. And they're the original US toolings that were pumping them out in the 70s and 80s. How do I know? Because the top of the can is still embossed with English, just like back in the day. Newer toolings (China sourced) are all in Mandarin, but you still see a lot of those older toolings used to stamp the pull tabs - English embossed and all!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
First off, that should be "a historic". The author is clearly not a native speaker and it's slightly painful to read but I digress. The real what the fuck is:
As an example, Schroeder cited a site that a colleague has been investigating in Washington: a campground that became one of the first major meeting places for the gay and lesbian community in the Northwest in the 1970s.
“The site may well be eligible to the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property,” Schroeder said.
Why is it every time some homos get together for an AIDs fuck fest (basically, any time, anywhere), somebody wants to call it an (sic) historic site? It should be closed down as a toxic biological waste site and made eligible for superfund clean up.
You know, on second thought, I guess that will make the geek compound and slashdot PT cruiser historical, too! (Fun fact: the first slashdot PT Cruiser wasn't even a PT Cruiser -- it was Jon Katz's van -- he cruised for Pre-Teens.)
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"...Blew out my flip flop. Stepped on a pop top. Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home..."
You couldn't write Margaritaville today.
Proverbs 21:19
"I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists!" (TV: Silence in the Library)
A response to those who complained (or bragged) that events of 50 years ago aren't "history", for whatever sincere or insincere reasons you gave, a reminder: history keeps happening. They will be history someday, if they aren't now.
When you are 100 years in your grave, those pull-tabs and their cans could still be helping historians and archaeologists figure things out, perhaps in ways that we can't begin to imagine.
Who would have thought fifty years ago that isotope ratios in human remains could tell us about diet? Or that unexpected things could be learned from textual or statistical analysis of digitized old public records? (Or that there would *be* massive amounts of digitized old public records?)
A little perspective might be helpful about now. And perhaps some humility.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.