I love that this includes modern artifacts as well. The nineties mobile phone already looks archaeological by comparison to modern ones.

My favourite station is Rokin, because it includes an amazing display of these artifacts (from Roman dishes to Nokia 3310s) in between the escalators that take you to the platform. It's incredible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/knolling/comments/e3e86r/at_rokin_m...

This is basically just a massive database of litter that documents what people threw in the canal over the centuries. It is interesting to see the materials change as you scroll from the older dates up to the present day.

There's an Ericsson GH388 phone I used in 90s!

IIRC it was my first mobile.

Never used Nokia though it had major market share those days.

I used a Nokia in the early 2000s. But my fondest memories are of my W810i (much “newer” than the GH388… by about 11 years ).

I notice most of the phones seem to be missing SIM cards = intentional disposal ? Or have they just come apart over time?

All your stuff would be historical artifacts a century from now. Do you ever just throw anything away? You should consider preserving it instead, for the generations that come after you. How will they feel if they knew you just threw historical artifacts in the garbage bin?

That is to say, keeping anything historical has its limits. If we always keep everything historical, we will keep literally everything, and the planet will be quite full pretty quickly, with no place to build anything.

We should be careful to preserve truly historically relevant things. But most historical things are just old trash...

Wholly disagree here. The past has immense value, but, well, it's the past. Historical artefacts are only valuable through our cultural lense. I think I would always choose building the future over preserving the past.

The website answers this question directly:

> This website is a product of the Department of Archaeology, Monuments and Archaeology (MenA), City of Amsterdam, in cooperation with the Chief Technology Office (CTO), City of Amsterdam.

Seems to me like a good, culturally enriching way for a city to spend a bit of time and money.

What's the problem exactly? In the Netherlands we sometimes take the time to make nice things just because it looks nice and/or because we like to commemorate our shared history.

That's exactly what history should be about. Ordinary lives of ordinary people. But it's mostly which King fought with which emperor and slept with which socialite.

Depends on the sources, earlier historical writing is definitely like that, whilst more modern writing often has a more nuanced approach.

“histoire vue d'en bas et non d'en haut”