Charles Cheek asked about urban sanitation in England. Basically it was
pretty primative until the C19. Lined cesspits are relatively rare and
usually have high status assemblages in them. Most of the ones I know date to
the late C17 or early C18 (or rather their final contents- not the same
thing). Their final fills are usually associated with house demolitions. We
have nothing like the numbers or richness of deposits found in Dutch towns.
Why their absence after this I am not entirely sure- it may well be a
reflection of the change from stone to to brick and an unfortunate tendency
to still bulldoze such features in the UK . Urban excavation is also highly
biased geographically. New middle-class georgian buildings often cluster in
new suburbs.
 
On chamber pots I quote from Peter Brears's, _The English Country Potter_,
1971
"Chamber, or stool pots, such as the one from Pieter Breughel the Elder's
engraving of 'Indolence' from the 'The Seven Deadly Sins' of 1557 were only
used by the wealthy in England at this time. Sir William Petre of Inglestone
Hall, for example, ordered four stool pots at twopence each, from Prentice
the potter of Stock in 1550. It was not until the last quarter of the century
that chamber pots came into general use, but by the early seventeenth century
they were commonplace. In the recent excavations at Sandal Castle, near
Wakefield, which was destroyed by siege in 1645, it was noted that every room
in the castle, with the exception of the stables, contained a yellow-ware
chamber-pot, thus proving how widely accepted they had become."
Low Counties influence on early post-medieval ceramic forms in England was
very significant. See Simon Schama's _the Embarassment of Riches_ on the
Dutch cleanliness obsession.
Paul Courtney, Leicester, UK