The Collaborative International Dictionary
Kitchen middens \Kitch"en mid`dens\ (k[i^]ch"[e^]n m[i^]d`d'nz) n. pl. [Dan. kj["o]k-kenm["o]ddings kitchen leavings; cf. Scot. midden a dunghill.] Relics of neolithic man found on the coast of Denmark, consisting of shell mounds, some of which are ten feet high, one thousand feet long, and two hundred feet wide. The name is applied also to similar mounds found on the American coast from Canada to Florida, made by the North American Indians.
Usage examples of "kitchen middens".
From Sheba's time his memory handed him a vision of her camel-station metropolis, a place that withstood Aelius Callus and his legions, but now like Carthage and himself was reduced to petty walls of crumbled dust, kitchen middens, sandspume, silent stones-a place waiting for some King Cyrus with shovels to expose its empty skulls.
More, something had very carefully sorted it out, as human scientists sort out the rubbish heaps -- the kitchen middens -- of a forgotten culture to find out what made it tick.
Twisted automobile carcasses, aluminum cans, non-returnable glass bottles and synthetic plastics form immense kitchen middens in our midst as more and more of our detritus resists decay.
Indulgently, we let glavers root through our kitchen middens, poking under logs for insects.