Since Virginia lacked urban centers until the middle of the Eighteenth Century, most waste pits reflected the lifestyles on individual plantations and their associated quarters or isolated houses on the frontier. Williamsburg, the capital of the colony from 1699-1780, had a different culture and a different waste stream from Stratford Hall or Mount Vernon, or the farms in the Shenandoah Valley. In rural Virginia, household waste disposal was easy - farm families could just dump their debris behind a ridge or in a depression in the pasture away from the farmhouse. For 3,000 years, that's how farmers handled the little stuff. The most significant item of solid waste in Virginia farms or towns was probably animal waste, until cars and tractors became common in the 1920's.
Horses produce horse manure in the cities, and on the farms cattle created vast quantities of dung.
That's when the place was packed with legislators and assorted other hangers-on, people who came to town for one of the rare moments of entertainment in the days before movies, radio, TV and the Internet. After the widespread adoption of cars and tractors, horse manure faded as a solid waste management problem. Waste disposal in a rural, scattered population does not required centralized operations. When population density reaches a certain threshold in urban areas, however, it makes sense to have a waste disposal service collect garbage from homes and businesses and carry it away. Arlington County reached that threshold at the end of the 1920's.