KITCHEN-MIDDEN ( kitchen + midden, refuse-heap, after the equivalent Dan. kjokken Ancient refuse of a camp or village. in whiell are found buried relies of human in dustry and art. If they are on the seashore they are called shell-heaps, because mollusks enter largely into their mass. All over the world, wherever the camps of primitive peoples were located with any permanency, the huts or tents were set up on the site of the refuse pile of former villages, and were abandoned and rebuilt repeatedly until the whole mass was often as much as a hundred feet in depth. The Danish Kjiikkenniiiddings were at first thought to be natural formations on the beach. When, however, their artificial composition was made evident, only a few efforts with pick and shovel were needed to reveal piercers. knives, scrapers, axes, slingstones, pottery, horns, bone needles, and flakes. The bones of mammals were mixed with the shells—stag, roedcer, wild boar, urns, (log, wolf, fox, marten, otter, seal. water-rat, Leaver, lynx, wildcat, hedgehog, bear, and even the mouse. There too are found mingled bones of birds and fish and more than a dozen kinds of shells. Ilere and there a hearth made up of flat stones showed the marks of tire and proved the existence of domestic life. lit some places this (bhris was as much as ten feet thick and stretched along the beach a thousand feet. The width varied with the shore-line. lying at times two hundred feet. hut growing narrower in both directions. The excavation of the Danish kitchen midd•ns gave the impulse for the exploration of similar formations in many parts of the world. In the shell-heaps of Omori, Japan. evidence has been found of the existemp of a far more primi tive people than now dwell in those islands. In the shell-heaps of the Aleutian Islands layers of different species more found which load to the conviction that the present Aleuts Were pre tided by a much ruder race. Shell-heaps on the coast of British Columbia, Oregon, and southern Cali fornia, of vast size. have been explored and have the (iameter of the true savage life here before the centuries of Spanish acculturation. The Atlantic coast of America, from Nova Scotia to Tierra del Fuego, and even the inland waters, wherever fresh-water mollusks abounded, are full of similar evidence. in the Straits of Magellan the almost naked savages are still in the kitehen-mid den epoch, just as seen by early explorers. On the Atlantic coast of Brazil, wherever there is a favorable spot, is the sambaqui. or ancient shell heap, of such enormous proportions that the accumulation of some of them must have required thousands of years. Huge forests have grown over
them and river-drifts have hidden others from view. Farther north, on the Florida Keys, hun dreds of specimens have been reeovered from the water which identify the ancient Key-dwellers with aborigines of Yuealan and Central America. Farther north the waters of Florida on both sides and along the Saint John's are a vast repository of kitchen-middens or shell-heaps, which have been avemmilating for ages. The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries are now vast reservoirs of marine food. but in aboriginal times they were still richer. Sonic of the heaps are many acres in extent, from ten to twenty feet deep in places, and rich in relies of the makers. These heaps do not disappear from the coast until the Saint Law rence is reached.
A comparison of relics in the shell-heaps with those of inland tribes and with other peoples of the same grade of culture throughout the world leads to the conclusion that in none of them is it a matter of a unique race or culture. The pottery in the shell-heaps of the States was always characteristic of the region; at the North the ornamentation was effected by press ing twine into the soft clay; from Florida, as among the Cherokees, and northward. stamps were used fur this purpose; and around the OuIf States, painted ware was common. As the shell heaps were for temporary there was little industry characteristic of residence there.
Consult : Rau. Artificin/ Shell Deposits of New Jersey, sniithsonian 1Zeports ( Washington, 1864) ; Briiston, Artificial Rhell-Deposits of the Culled States, Smithsonian Reports( Washington, 18116) ; Wyman, Freshwater of Florida, :Memoirs of the Peabody Academy of Science, vol. i. (Cambridge, 1875) ; Lubbock, Prehistoric Times I New York, 1872) ; Dall. Tribes of the Extreme Northwest, Contributions to North American Eth nology, vol. i. (Washington, 1877) ; .Morse, Nhci/ .11ounds of Omori (Tokio. 1879) ; Moore, nu merous papers on Florida ,:\lounds, in which the shell-heaps are described and profusely illus trated! Ifolmes, "Earthenware of Florida," in Moore. Shell-Mounds. etc. (Philadelphia, 1894) ; Cushing, Ancient Key-Dwellers' Remains (Phila delphia, 1897). Consult, also: Schumacher, Paul, Kjakenmoddings on the Vorth(rn Coast of .1 m erica (Smithsonian Reports, 1873) ; id., n rirn t Grams and Shell-Heaps in California (ib., 1874) ; id., Researehes in the Kjakkenntorldings of the Coast of Oregon, United States Oeological Survey Bulletins. vol. iii.. see. 1 (Washington, 1877) ; for Brazilian sambaquis, BMus, 7'he Earth and Its Inhabitants, vol. xix., trans. (New York, 1890).