midden

Encircling the footprint of each roundhouse were "middens," haloes of rubbish dumped from the stilt village above, included broken pots, butchered animal bone, and "coprolites" or fossilised faeces.

The high presence of hearths and mollusk and fish remains in the middens suggests that the area was used for the processing and consumption of marine resources.

In the summer of 2022, a team of researchers visited Greenland to take soil samples from heaps of human and animal waste, or middens, dating from the smallpox epidemic and before.

Their bones have been recovered from refuse piles -- called middens -- alongside shells, fish bones and other scraps from previous meals.

These practices include generating "middens" -- piles of waste and food scraps, similar to compost heaps, that are maintained in certain locations around the center of a village.