‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ may be one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines. This exclamation in Hamlet immediately draws our thoughts to smells and decomposing rubbish, even if only of the metaphorical kind. However, the whiff of decay we bring to the forefront here is rather more literal than the one Shakespeare had in mind. It is another kind of rot, namely that produced by kitchen middens. This kind of rot provides fascinating insights into the way that ancient people organised themselves in settlements, what they ate, and the stuff that tells us about the continuation or collapse of their societies – both in prehistoric and historic times. It is, in short, the kind of rot that gets most archaeologists excited, when they find it.
As it happens, Shakespeare’s statement was closer to the mark than he might have imagined: certainly, Copenhagen in the 1600s was a city brimming with rubbish. A statute in 1680 instructed the mayor’s secretary to record how the inhabitants dealt with their waste, which tended simply to pile up in the streets. Shortly after that, a solution to the problem offered itself, when it was decided to fill in the medieval moats encircling the city. This was a disposal plan that even the litterbug Copenhageners were willing to follow.
The outcome was brought to light a few years ago, when excavations for the Copenhagen City Metro cut the backfilled moats, and tons of household waste and rotten rags emerged from the deep. A chapter in the fascinating book Archaeologies of Waste details the deposits, buried in the brief period between 1675 and 1685 – a very short span of time in archaeological terms. The finds provide not only a sobering view of diet, health, and subsistence in the European Age of Absolutism, but a memento of posh and not-so-posh habits of dining, drinking, and smoking, as well as faded fashion fads recorded by more than 1,300 pieces of textile.
Seeking a legendary lost city