In recent decades, archaeologists have turned their attention to ancient cooking pits and trash heaps because these reveal what ordinary people were doing a long, long time ago. Instead of assuming history is what the rich and powerful rulers were doing in ancient empires, the trash heaps and cooking pits of so-called ordinary people tell us what real life was like. They tell us about what matters to people. They give us insight into value, which may have very little with price.

Trash heaps often include bones, corn cobs, or other items that let us know what people ate and what their diet meant for their health, or lack of it. Not only that, you can measure the tooth marks on bones and figure out what people were eating, and if dogs were getting a shot at the bones as well. Knowing this c…