Realize this is a bit late for this thread; I've been out of town over the
past week.
The one time I distinctly remember notable numbers of restorable-whole
ceramic vessels in privies was on the Wilmington Boulevard Project, done in
the early 1980s. Most were chamber pots. They did not appear to have been
deposited in a house-cleaning session; more commonly, they were associated
with the fecal-material fill layers in these privies. I remember one privy
in which we found several redware pots, but only one creamware/refined
earthenware pot. We figured that dumping the pot in the privy was a common
early morning chore for a child or a servant. This probably lead to the
loss of a few pots by half-asleep people. We further speculated that folks
went fishing for their refined earthenwares (with one getting away), but
let the redwares remain where they fell.
David Babson.
At 07:59 PM 5/5/00 +0200, you wrote:
>just wondering - does anyone else experience/suffer the phenomenon of finding
>lots and lots of complete pots thrown down in wells and latrines? any
>explanation/theories out there? spring cleaning? out of fashion?
>
>geoff carver
>http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
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