In this activity, students investigate what historic rubbish dumps (called middens) can reveal about people’s daily lives and the resources they used.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
- talk about what ancient middens tell us about past lives
- understand that discarded rubbish can tell us indirectly about the environment
- predict what will happen to today’s rubbish in the future
- extract information from written text.
Download the Word file (see link below) for:
- introduction/background
- what you need
- what to do
- extension ideas
- student handout.
Related content
Find out more about middens.
Explore the issue of rubbish disposal with these key resources below:
- Material World – Recycling and biodegradability – curates the wide range of Hub resources on the issue of waste, landfills and more.
- Building Science Concepts Book 60 Rubbish: How Do We Deal with It? for use in the early to middle primary years.
- Waste – a growing challenge! – activity that support students in levels 1–4 with learning about waste and recycling.
- Read up about the structure of landfills in New Zealand, then try this online labelling interactive or paper-based activity and information resource. Thinking about landfills is a ready-to-use cross-curricular student worksheet for NZC levels 4–5.
Useful links
Learn more about regulations around middens and archaeological sites on the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga website.
See the New Zealand Archaeological Association for more information about archaeological sites in Aotearoa New Zealand.
