kitchen midden

noun

1. a mound consisting of shells of edible mollusks and other refuse, marking the site of a prehistoric human habitation.

kitchen midden

noun

1. archaeol the site of a large mound of domestic refuse marking a prehistoric settlement: usually including bones, potsherds, seashells, etc

Word History and Origins

Origin of kitchen midden¹

1860–65; translation of Danish kökkenmödding

Example Sentences

Simple ceramics made of red clay — undecorated and roughly formed — look as though they may have been pulled from a primeval tomb or kitchen midden.

From Washington Post

“The Oral History is a great hodgepodge and kitchen midden of hearsay,” Joseph Mitchell reported in his first piece about Gould, published in The New Yorker in 1942.

From The New Yorker

Our right flank rested upon a dunghill, or, rather, a kitchen midden, a public store of all manner of beastliness and the playground of the little schoolboys.

From Project Gutenberg

The eggs are laid in old manure heaps and kitchen middens, and the maggots, which eventually are transformed into flies, nourish themselves in those accumulations.

From Project Gutenberg

Before night these kitchen middens were an inch or two deep and nearly a foot in length, composed, literally, of thousands of skins, wings, and insect armor.

From Project Gutenberg