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Pull-Top Can Tabs, At 50, Reach Historic Archaeological Status

Posted by timothy on from the remember-making-giant-chains-of-these dept.

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.

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Environmentalism, much? by saloomy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seems that there are a more ubiquitous items we could designate? Why a form of pollution?

    1. Re:Environmentalism, much? by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In the late 80's I was surveying an area that we used to party at in high school
      It had been fenced off for over a decade and it was interesting walking up on old fire pits that had been left to the desert
      Among the discarded clothing and garbage there was an occasional steel can that had been laying undisturbed where it had been thrown years earlier
      I grabbed one for myself, an old Schlitz steel can that was rusted to shit on one side and all spankin brand new on the other
      Yay! Archaeology!

      --
      Wherever You Go, There You Are
  2. Re:America by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My mother's grandfather had founded a town along the border in the late 1800's
    The place has been largely abandoned since the Great Depression and we would take a rare trip down 50 miles of washboard road to visit the ruins when I was a kid
    There were a couple of people that had set up trailers and ran their own museums.
    Lots of stuff like the jar of whiskey with a rattle snake in it that an old Chinese man that lived there had used for medicine and broken pieces of my mom's family china that they had dug out of the trash pits
    Since then some of the town descendants have set up a web site and hold a reunion every now and then
    I'm pretty sure the guy with the museum is long dead, I doubt that he had any legal right to anything that he had scrounged
    That's how things used to roll in the desert

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
  3. Re:America by Arnold+Reinhold · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think you are missing the point. When the pullout tabs were phased out in favor of tabs that stay with the can, I remember thinking that a thousand years from now discarded pullout tabs will be a valuable archeological resource. They are distinctive, ubiquitous, and indestructible, and because they were only used during a short time, they would conclusively date any architectural layer they were found in. Maybe modern circuit boards with their date coded components will serve a similar purpose. I wonder what it would take to get current manufacturers to emboss a year code in can tops or in IC dies? Make trash serve history.