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Refuse and the formation of middens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Stuart Needham  and
Tony Spence
Stuart Needham
Affiliation:
Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, The British Museum, London WC1B 3DG, England
Tony Spence
Affiliation:
Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, The British Museum, London WC1B 3DG, England
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Extract

The prodigious quantities of refuse recovered from excavations at Runnymede Bridge, Berkshire, England — and at other late prehistoric British sites — highlight those archaeological entities we call ‘rubbish’ and ‘middens’. What is a ‘midden’? General thoughts on an archaeology of refuse are applied to the specific case of these 1st-millennium BC sites in southern England in an attempt to comprehend their origin and scale in terms of the period's social geography.

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Papers
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Antiquity , Volume 71 , Issue 271 , March 1997 , pp. 77 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1997

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