My mom's country cousins, in Montana, were horrified that people went to the
bathroom INSIDE their homes.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Elizabeth Newman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:14 PM
Subject: Fw: Spanish Colonial wells/privies
Oops, meant to reply to the list....
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Elizabeth Newman <[log in to unmask]>
To: BERNARD FONTANA <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 10:54 PM
Subject: Re: Spanish Colonial wells/privies
I have to agree, too. I worked on a multi-year ethnoarchaeological study in
a rural village in central Mexico. As part of the research, we did a
complete architectural study of 5% of the households (20) in a village with
a population just under 2,000. Out of the twenty households, two had a
dedicated "latrine" area, though these were usually just disused and
partially ruined buildings in the household's compound. The norm was that
you just found a quiet place in the compound that was generally agreed upon
and did what you had to do. Everybody else would make a point of not
noticing. Each compound had zones of habitation, buildings, cleaned patios,
space for animals, and an area for trash (an open sheet midden, basically).
People used a discrete space in the trash area and often near the animals.
Dogs, chicken, turkey, goats, and sheep roamed at will, donkeys, pigs, and
horses were more restricted in their movements. The dogs especially were
not fed, and both they and the goats (along with other animals) foraged for
food in the midden. Generally, the organic remains of all sorts were quickly
disposed of. After a time, when the inorganics in the midden became a
problem everything was sort of collected up (including recent organics) and
transported to a secondary dump, usually in a dry stream bed out in the
fields where feral dogs would continue to scavenge. When excavating the
neighboring hacienda later, I didn't go looking for a privy, but honestly I
would have been shocked to find any such thing.
I myself lived in a more rural community (on the outskirts of another
village). I was one of only a handful of households in the community that
had indoor plumbing (which drains into the cornfield in which my house is
located). As a rule, my neighbors just take a stroll out into their corn
field and find themselves a quiet spot. Many of them have the financial
resources to put in plumbing, but have deliberately chosen not to. They are
totally disgusted that some of us actually do such things inside our homes.
It is actually something that is a source of teasing at neighborhood
parties.
Elizabeth Newman
________________________________
From: BERNARD FONTANA <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 6:35 PM
Subject: Re: Spanish Colonial wells/privies
I wouldn't be too hasty about the ability of dogs to get rid of human waste.
I have lived within fifteen feet of the boundary of an Indian reservation
for 56 years, and believe me, anything that's edible quickly disappears due
in no small part to the hunger of free-roaming dogs.
When I lived in Alaska anthropologist Margaret Lantis told me she had been
sent on assignment by the Alaska Native Service to Nunivak Island to she if
she could find out why there had been a spike in illnesses among the native
population. What she discovered was that in former times, Nunivak's
inhabitants used sinews to fashioned leashes with which to tie their dogs
up. Inevitably, the dogs chewed through the leather and ran free for short
periods of time -- cleaning up the community while they were at it. It was
only after chain leashes were introduced and the dogs were unable to go on
offal patrol, human waste included, that the resulting unsanitary
surroundings caused a jump in illnesses among the human population.
Bunny Fontana
----- Original Message ----- From: "John M. Foster, RPA"
<[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 10:04 AM
Subject: Re: Spanish Colonial wells/privies
I'm with Bob on this. I've worked on bits and pieces of seven California
Missions and never found a privy, well, or any other similar facility that
could be dated to the mission period. We just finished work at Missions
Soledad and Ventura, and did not find evidence of either. We also used GPR
at both. This lack of evidence could be a function of sampling as well but I
doubt it. There had to be (check your assumptions) some type of
institutional
method of waste management. There is tangential evidence in Laird,
Carobeth. 1975, Encounter with an Angry God: Recollections of My Life with
John Peabody Harrington ( Malki Museum Press, Banning, California) in which
she references dogs providing such services on a reservation. I find it
difficult to believe that dogs were the primary or even secondary means of
waste disposal in a mission setting.
In terms of wells, there is a photograph at Ventura that shows shafdufs
behind the mission but none has been found to my knowledge nor have the ones
in the photograph been excavated or reliably dated to the mission period. I
think this needs more discussion.
John M. Foster, RPA
Greenwood-Associates.com
310.454.3091 tel/fax
310.717.5048 cell
________________________________
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: Spanish Colonial wells/privies
I have not yet encountered any definite Spanish privies in my work in
Hispanic California, though there are plenty from Anglo and Asian-American
ones
in later phases of occupation at the Presidio of Santa Barbara. We did find
a
well of still yet undetermined date at the same site. I suspect that the
privies are more likely in military sites which are early and in the
Southeast, at a point less remote from the center of civilization, such as
St.
Augustine or other sites in Florida.
The major question for me is what did the Spanish do about waste disposal
at mission sites such
as San Antonio de Padua where there were up to 1300
Indians. Chamber pots worked well for the 2 padres, five soldiers, and
possible one or two others of European or mestizo origins, but were
impractical
for the large numbers of neophytes. With the health ramifications of this
issue, I cannot believe that this was just left to informal chance. In the
1790s, the Spanish were learning much more about the nature of disease and
the role of public health. However, so far we have found no traces of
trench
latrines anywhere. I believe chemical analysis of the soil is the best
bet for revealing this, as it leaves little visible trace behind.
Bob Hoover
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