What exactly are "middens"? What are a dig's "middens" like?

Dr. dig responds:
Middens are garbage pits. Middens may be pits filled with household or kitchen garbage or they may be for sewage.

Most houses these days don't have middens any longer because we have garbage trucks to take our garbage away to be burned or buried in landfills. But long ago, people used to bury garbage that couldn't be composted at the bottom of their gardens or in other places not too far from the kitchen door.

Archaeologists must be very careful when excavating middens because they may still harbor germs that have lain dormant but which are released when exposed to the air by excavation.

Middens are some of the most interest types of features an archaeologist can excavate; they are full of interesting finds: broken china, empty medicine bottles, bits of old machinery, worn out shoes.