> Imagine a 10,000yrs from now, someone finds a portion of a fossilized city dump with no direct access or lineage from present day. There’s not much that can be gleaned of things there.
You say this has all happened before, and yet that "a modern city dump in 10,000 years" would have a LOT of artifacts that do not exist in any 10,000 year old sites we've found. If we were to find one, a lot could actually be gleaned from it.
Things made of stone are easy ones, of course, since they already have. The volume of those today is far higher than in any historical sites. Glass, ceramics could also survive in many conditions. Copper, I think? But just the stone/concrete infrastructure remains of an NYC would be very noticable.
The volume of human remains would be wildly different too, admittedly we're getting away from just "city dumps" then.
you'd think we'd have more "bail top" bottles around today if they were so durable.
I've got a gully that was used as a trash dump in the 1920s. We found some "rust colored areas" in the soil and some ~10mm shards of ceramics with recognizable glazing still. even the bricks were shattered and easy to mistake for rock.
I think the speed of natural recycling is vastly underestimated. There's a few rare occasions and circumstances where preservation can happen; the default state is entropy eating things as fast as they're built.
It varies a lot by location and conditions. I find lots of stuff in fields around me, of all ages. Loads of Victorian ceramics, but also 1920s glass, 1980s ring pulls, Roman tiles, Mesolithic flint.
You say this has all happened before, and yet that "a modern city dump in 10,000 years" would have a LOT of artifacts that do not exist in any 10,000 year old sites we've found. If we were to find one, a lot could actually be gleaned from it.