Dan Mouer has taken Jay Stottman to task for wanting to study depositional
 processes in privies, saying the he won't be taken seriously. I imagine that
 Stottman would be looking beyond the obvious fecal deposition, because other
 factors are indeed at work. In the privies I have excavated, we found evidence
 of them having been cleaned out and rebuilt and having been used for trash
 disposal. At Kings Bay Plantation in Georgia, we found a punch bowl. How did it
 get there? Was it broken by a slave and hidden in the privy? Why did we find
 hundreds of pins, some in their original papers. Is that evidence of sewing
 activities or is it because women used pins to hold their clothes together
 instead of buttons. The latter is the most likely explanation, based on
 clothing styles in vogue. Were kitchen wastes disposed of down the privy hole?
 Were medicines, drugs, and alcohol bottles thrown into privies to hide bad
 habits or merely due to convenience? What is the evidence for insects in!
 the privy? What does this provide in the way of evidence on sanitation? Are
 there hiati between depositions? What is the time lag of artifacts? Who was
 using the privy? Was the privy in a permanent location and cleaned out by
 honeydippers, or was it moved around the lot? Is a particular privy a
 time-capsule of short duration?
 
We need to examine privies and other similar features as something more than
 just a good place to look for artifacts. If Stottman seriously examines the
 excavated data from a range of different types, locales, and time periods, he
 may well come up with some interesting and informative conclusions beyond the
 obvious depositional processes.
 
One key to understanding the privy and other backyard features is to have a good
 handle on the history of epidemiology, disease theory, and how that impacted
 local ordinances on trash removal and sanitation.
William H. Adams
P.O. Box 1177
Philomath, OR 97370-1177  USA
503-929-3102       -3264 fax
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