I'm glad your Trials of Tiny Portions had a happy ending! :-)

Very interesting write-up, again!

- lots of labor went into making things, so we generally only excavate things from landfills after they've been repurposed multiple times and come to the very end of their useful life
- eg garment pieces were reused as brushes to tar ships with (so they got preserved due to the tar)

I'd never thought of that before, that is a really interesting point!