I became aware of this topic reccently and can respond to Mary Ellin
D'Agostino's original query.  John Milner Associates has excavated a brick
privy vault in Boston (as part of the Central Artery project with Timelines,
Inc.) dating to at least the last quarter of the seventeenth century. It may
have been constructed slightly earlier since it follows the proscribed
dimensions of a 1650s Boston ordanance.  There were only two restorable
vessels in it, although lots of other useful information on perishable items,
and one of them was a redware chamber pot.  Its form was the "normal" chamber
pot form, rather bulbous with relatively broad rim, probably madthe colonies.
A series of articles on the privy and its contents are planned for an HA
issue, but if you would like more information before then, you can contact me
(Charles Cheek at [log in to unmask]) or Jo Balicki (whose e-mail I am using).
 
Mary Beaudry has also excavated a feature on the Wilkinson Backlot in Boston
that dates to the same time period that is possibly a privy, but I do not
know its contents.
 
The presence of a brick privy in Boston is not that surprising.  Boston is
known as the city with the most concern for urban infrastructure and had the
best system of drains of any of the major population centers by the
mid-eighteenth century according to Bridenbaugh.  Also, if you follow David
Hackett Fisher, the colonists in Massachusetts were originally from the most
urban area of England, East Anglia, and may have brought concerns about the
urban environment with them.  However, I do not know what the state of urban
sanitation was in these East Anglian cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and would be interested to know if this topic is being explored in
England.
 
The Central Artery archeology project found that after this initial brick
vault, the privies constructed were shallow wood-lined boxes set into the
ground, less than three feet deep deep.  They may have been in use for some
time and continually cleaned out before being abandoned.  We also have two of
this kind of privy dating to the 1720s, but I don't have the data at hand to
know if there were chamberpots in them also.  By the time the nineteenth
century rolled around, deeper vaults lined with stone or brick were being
built.   Since relatively little data recovery has been done in Boston, there
is not a large enough sample of privies to know if this sequence was common
or restricted to the portions of the three adjacent yards excavated for this
project.
 
We also have some inventory data, we could share with you if you so desire.
 Good luck with your research.
 
Charles Cheek