The prodigious quantities of refuse recovered from excavations at Runn
ymede Bridge, Berkshire, England - and at other late prehistoric Briti
sh sites - highlight those archaeological entities Mie 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.