After the third little plastic ketchup packet, do you start to wonder if all that plastic is really necessary? Civilization as we know it has come to depend heavily upon plastic, and research shows little bits of plastic have gotten into just about everything... including our bodies.
Plastic has been around for long enough to be the focus of some archaeology. Underground History, our joint podcast with the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology, explores plastic, and its ubiquity, in a new edition.
Chelsea Rose from SOULA chats with Kimberly Wooten, a Historical Archaeologist who works in the Cultural Studies Office at Cal Trans, the California Department of Transportation.