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.
Few things in the field are _ conclusive _ many things are highly suggestive and have few other explainations.
WRT "brain surgey" - the operation in question would be to relieve swelling under the skull that was pressing on the brain - probably caused by a blow.
The remaining skull would show that the hole was cut using an edge, likely extremely sharp flaked stone similar to a modern ceramic edge knife - an original blow would have splintered bone and caused a swelling, the splintering would have been cut away. Other evidence would likely have included signs that the bone restitched itself and "grew back" to a degree, demonstrating the person survived for some years afterwards.
I know nothing about this specific skull, there are others with similar work discussed in journals.
reply