The notion that modern Western societies are only now “rediscovering” circular economic practices overlooks a profound historical truth: collecting and recycling scrap has been a deeply rooted, consistent activity shaping urban and rural life across the last two millennia.

2,000 Years

Of continuous circular economic practices in scrap collection and reuse

The great variability of processes that has emerged suggests the critical need for a more integrated and cross-disciplinary approach to ancient economies, one that explicitly includes circular practices in the historical narrative. The perceived invisibility of these efficient recycling systems today, paradoxically, merely documents how effective they were in the past. This enduring reliance on conservative and regenerative practices challenges the simplistic categorization of past economies as purely linear or consumerist,.

The Unsung Heroes of Resource Optimization

The continuous role played by often marginalized figures in optimizing resource use is a stark example of this pervasive circularity,. Known by various names across time and geography—ragpickers, junk dealers (chiffonniers, scrutarii, rigattieri)—these individuals acted as crucial engines for the local circular economy by physically collecting, sorting, and redistributing discarded materials back into the supply chain,. Their activity demonstrates a considerable continuity in both social organization and function over time,. The overall economic impact of the second-hand, reused materials they handled was

Substantial

Economic impact of second-hand materials in urban environments

, especially in dense urban environments.

Defining the Engine: Heterogeneity and Persistence of the Scrap Trade

Defining the precise role of the “junk dealer” is inherently difficult because this figure often blended with other characters like peddlers, hawkers, scavengers, and even higher-status figures like shopkeepers and pawnbrokers. This group was highly heterogeneous in economic and social status, ranging from poor street collectors of rags and scraps to important traders,. The essential guideline for identifying this group, however, remains the activity of collecting and reselling discarded or damaged items. The core business model utilized non-monetized transactions, such as barter, a practice that persisted across the ages as part of the informal economy,. For instance, literary sources from the Roman period describe hucksters wandering cities, collecting broken glass and exchanging it for sulphur sticks (likely similar to modern matches), demonstrating this well-known, routine activity in the urban community,. In the medieval Islamic world, specialized terms like bayyāʿ sakaṭ (junk dealer) and ṣāḥib al ḵulḳān (rag merchant) confirm the existence of people engaged in activities extremely similar to those in medieval Italy, dating back to the 8th or 9th centuries AD,,.

Scavenging, Laws, and Moral Paradoxes

Circular systems extended far beyond day-to-day trade, sometimes involving massive, organized efforts, notably seen in the scavenging of Roman villas and large buildings,. However, unlike scavenging building materials from ruins, which was deemed morally neutral, the reuse of materials acquired through grave-robbing posed a significant legal and ethical problem,. Early medieval and late antique laws vehemently condemned grave-robbing, viewing it as an act of desecration, sacrilege, and pollution, with severe penalties including forced labor or death,,,,. Emperor Constantius II, for instance, noted that violating tombs perpetrated a twofold crime: despoiling the dead and contaminating the living by using the material in new construction. Yet, despite this moral and legal condemnation, the reopening of graves is amply attested, suggesting a divergence between mandated laws and widespread practice,.

The ambiguity of this practice meant that moral justifications often had to be negotiated and deployed, especially when central authority was involved. In Ostrogothic Italy, King Theoderic ordered an organized, top-down collection of gold and silver from a burial site, explicitly justifying it by arguing that gold rightly removed from graves had no owner, and abandoning the wealth was a “kind of crime” against the welfare of the living,. The king was careful to distinguish this royal action from punishable grave-robbing by ordering his official to “restrain the hand from the ashes of the dead”. This coexistence of highly organized, political scavenging and uncoordinated activities, along with the moral complexity surrounding burial grounds, reveals that circular practices were managed at various levels of society and required constant negotiation,.

Measuring the Economic Footprint of Invisible Labor

Quantifiable evidence, often reliant on proxy data since recycling economies tend toward invisibility, strongly supports the significant economic impact of these agents,. A comparison of material assemblages found in sealed, undisturbed domestic contexts versus large extra moenia communal dumps in Roman towns revealed a striking pattern: dumps contained

Near Absence

Of metals and glass in ancient urban dumps, showing efficient recycling

, even though these materials were abundant in primary domestic contexts,. This near-absence demonstrates that efficient collection and recycling mechanisms, driven by the activities of junk dealers and collectors, ensured that “almost nothing was wasted”,. This effective continuous process led to optimization of resource use and reduced dependency on raw materials,.

The collegium of centonarii provides a specific Roman example related to textiles and rags (centones),. These guilds, which may have included textile dealers and/or producers, played a vital role in the circular economy of Roman textiles, supplying materials for military and civilian garments, particularly those for the large numbers of people with little spending power. Their existence, and the known friction between them and other guilds (like goldsmiths in Rome during later periods), suggests the substantial economic importance of these circular circuits in urban life. This continuity of specialized trade, social structure (rich dealers versus poorer collectors), and economic impact over the last two millennia highlights that circularity was not exceptional but fundamental to past economic systems,,,.

Conclusion: The Unending Cycle

The agents of the scrap trade—from the humble scrutarius rummaging through refuse to the organized centonarii dealing in rags—were central to conservative and regenerative economic processes in the Roman and early medieval periods,,. Their work ensured that material resources were optimized, waste was avoided, and the necessity for new, raw materials was reduced,. This successful circular approach, especially evident in the near-total retrieval of high-value materials like metal and glass from ancient dumps, underscores that these practices were not merely responses to economic crisis, but deep-rooted, efficient mechanisms of daily life,. If efficient recycling economies are inherently invisible, then the consistent presence and continuity of the junk dealer documents their remarkable success throughout history.