Just going to say the concept of recycled is extremely old. The concept of garbage is modern. Of course everything is recycled in ancient times. The coliseum was mostly knocked down to build more modern buildings. Anything that could be reused, was reused.
Both set of my grandparents were farm families from Tennessee and Mississippi. When I was a kid I remember pretty much everything on both their farms was made from something that had been recycled. You didn't throw anything away, you figured out something else you could do with it. When a belt became too worn to use as decent clothing it got used to fix a horse bridle, etc.
Actually, a lot of digs take place in smelly old garbage dumps. I did a Physics/Art History major and they were digging some old latrine in Philadelphia, as I remember hearing about. Sometimes broken pottery and jewelry is just tossed into a convenient dump.
Exactly right. I was thinking the same thing.