Frozen Greenland middens preserve 4,500 years of farms, seal hunts and toilets

Greenland has a long and checkered history of human settlement: several Paleo-Inuit cultures since approximately 2,500 BCE, descendants of Vikings between the 10th and 15th centuries, and early modern Danes since 1721. All left their traces on the landscape, for example in the form of ancient domestic rubbish heaps. Composed of waste like animal bones, excrement, mollusk shells and human artifacts, these middens are a precious resource for archaeologists.