Using archaeology to unearth the lingering effects of capitalism at one of Western Canada’s first industrial sites

Revenant Waste explores the haunting afterlife of industrial waste in Edmonton’s Mill Creek Ravine, one of Western Canada’s earliest industrial zones. This book shows how waste shapes vulnerable communities and environments both materially and psychologically. Haeden Stewart presents the first systematic study of industrial devastation from the standpoint of waste itself, treating it as a socially and ecologically active force that lingers, leaches, and transforms.

This book uses an interdisciplinary approach that blends archaeology, environmental science, archival research, and ethnography with historical vignettes, resulting in a novel framework for understanding the uneven and indeterminate effects of waste. Drawing on years of intensive excavation at the site, Stewart reveals how this landscape is still defined by the remnants of colonial dispossession and industrial activity in the form of toxic heavy metals, meatpacking factory refuse, and invasive shrubs. More than just a study of contamination, Revenant Waste is a meditation on the uncanny nature of waste—how it remains, resurfaces, and reshapes the world.