In Delaware, privy pits were unusual until sometime in the nineteenth
century. We did a literature survey and found that only the elite sites
were equipped with pit privies until the nineteenth century. There are
several studies indicating that in Southern sites, even some
twentieth-century privies would overhang the chicken yard. Makes you lose
you taste for chicken, eh?

Out in the arid west, there would be even less incentive to dig a privy
pit. A soil chemistry survey should tell you if there was a surface privy
or a dungheap on a site.

The presence of much domestic trash on manured fields tends to support the
idea that farm domestic waste was recycled onto the fields.


  Celebrating an anniversary year:
  20 years of Archaeology and History

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