I really can't resist any longer, I always like to talk about privies.
However, I think the silence is due to the fact that most people are
probably in the field.  That's where I have been and I am too hot and tired
to reply much, even on a topic that I like to talk about.  Anyway, privy
discussions have taken place several times on the list since at least 95
when was working on my thesis (on privies of course).  However, the slave
privy question is an interesting one that has not been discussed much.  I
don't know of any that have been excavated and I would be interested to find
out more about them.  I might also remind people that privies don't always
start-out as privies.  As we all well know, we have many features because
people like to fill-in holes.  Perhaps an abandoned pit cellar could have
later functioned as a privy or repository for human waste amongst other
fill.

Also, I have a question about rural privies.  Several of you have already
given some good information on them.  I usually deal with urban privies and
I am a bit hesitant about working on rural ones, particularly since I don't
know when they were last used, which can be pretty recent.  Anyway, the
question is  would rural privies accumulate many artifacts during use?  Many
urban privies are full of stuff because people in urban areas generally had
a tough time finding a place to get rid of their trash.  With plenty of
space to dispose of trash in the rural areas, would a privy serve a similar
function.  At least in Kentucky, the prevailing theory of rural trash
disposal is in the nearest sinkhole, except for some major appliances and
cars which end-up in the front yard.

M. Jay Stottman
Kentucky Archaeological Survey


-----Original Message-----
From: Lyle E. Browning <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, July 19, 1999 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: Slave privies -Reply


>Diane Dismukes wrote:
>
>> If waste is not deposited in a Privy, how then is it disposed of? This is
the question,
>
>Privies are intermediate disposal areas of a sort. There's direct deposit
into the privy and secondary deposits via chamber pots or similar.
>
>If what Mike has is a privy, the materials have to be disposed of after
their initial deposition. Agreed, pigs are excellent disposers of human
waste and so apparently were dogs in some cases. It seems to me to boil down
to perpetuating foul odors in a confined space as in an urban setting along
with your neighbor doing the same thing until
>the net effect is a miasma. That appears to be the impetus for the anti-hog
legislation in urban and therefore necessarily confined spatial settings.
Hoglots in rural settings aren't necessarily odiferous and in fact the pigs
themselves are quite fastidious creatures.
>
>The real question here appears to be what happens to the stuff after the
privy is filled. There are excellent indications of nightsoil spreading on
fields in European contexts, but was this commonly done in the Americas?
>
>From what I've heard, it must first be "fermented" otherwise the stuff  can
transmit diseases so what's the early history of sewerage treatment before
the germ theory of disease apart from emptying it all into the nearest
stream?
>
>Yes, the elites had separate and sometimes quite elaborate and multi-holer
outhouses. Shirley Plantation in VA has the original 18th century  bedroom
adult potty chair which has a cushion on a board which lifts to avoid the
problems of walking several hundred yards at night to a privy, ladies to the
left, gentlement to the right.
>
>After the privies filled, TJ at Monticellohad an elaborate tramway
arrangement, Westover had large receptables and other places had other
arrangements for the initial deposits to be removed, but where did it all go
then?
>
>Did anyone apart from George Washington at Mt. Vernon have a dung
depository. Did that one and any of the others include human as well as
animal waste?
>
>Is the deafening silence out there because we're squeamish and don't wish
to discuss such disgusting stuff in polite company or is it because there's
a large data gap which Mike Trinkley has suddenly opened?
>
>
>Lyle