Wastes - as tangible remains - are a useful tool for the rediscovery of a passed culture. By a praxeological approach, the history of humans could be read across the waste.

Looking inside a sacred area, the waste acquires a significant role as a residual part of sacred stuff - in terms of cults, rites, and visitors. Regarding the difficult management of waste, recycling represents certainly the more sustainable solution.

In this way, the Sanctuary of Pyrgi, the harbour of the Etruscan city of Caere (actually, Cerveteri), is an interesting instance for the exam of wastes and their rule as recycled things inside a sacred space. In the Southern Sanctuary of Pyrgi, archaeological excavation brought to light an extensive dump zone with a huge quantity of fragmented pottery. The pottery was recycled to level up the floor and to reconstruct the sacred space after the Dionigian invasion of Pyrgi (384 B.C.). By analysing the black gloss ware pottery found in the dump - which was a fossil guide for the chronology of the context - this paper provides how the pottery's waste recycled in the sacred area of Pyrgi was a mirror of the productive system in terms of capacity, technology, and economic links.