Hello Grace,
    I am responding on list to your post because I am very interested in the
same question concerning trash pits and how they are formed.  I would be most
interested in whatever light our colleagues might throw on this and any
references in the literature which might be helpful.
 
    We are surveying and salvaging (where possible) a 19th century U.S. Arsenal
(at Augusta Georgia).  There were quarters for officers and troops and we have
recovered trash pits near two officers quarters (one just a week ago).
Obviously, we are in the midst of the work and interpretation seems far away
just now.
 
    Some of these pits seem to represent, as your post suggests, more than just
daily household living refuse.  For example, the pit we recently salvaged had
ceramics, smoking pipes, and kitchen refuse (large mammal bone with butchering
marks), but it also contained broken brick (the buildings are brick), nails of
a several sizes, roofing slate, sheet metal objects, etc., in other words,
construction debris).  I am much inclined to interpret this as an episodic
general clean up of yard trash mixed with ordinary garbage.  The pit itself
seems to have been delibrately dug because it extended well into a sandy
subsoil.  I do not believe that it was just hole-filling at the edge of the
yard.
 
    Hope to hear some useful thoughts on this type of situation.
 
 
    Christopher Murphy
    Department of History and Anthropology
    Augusta State University
    Augusta, Georgia  30904
    (706) 737-1709
    [log in to unmask]
 
Grace H. Ziesing wrote:
 
> My colleagues and I at the Anthropological Studies Center and Foothill
> Resources are in the process of writing an “Interpretive Report” for a
> project we did near Union Station in downtown Los Angeles a couple years
> ago. The volume is intended to go beyond the standard data-recovery type of
> report by offering our interpretations of the fieldwork and laboratory
> analyses. We would like this to be useful to professionals and interested
> lay readers alike, and, to that end, are compiling a collection of short,
> focused, and well-illustrated essays on various topics relating to the
> research questions we originally posed.
>
> One of the topics is called “Cleaning House” and is an attempt to explain
> how the pits, privies, and wells we all so love to find got filled with
> household refuse in the first place. The kinds of deposits we’ve been
> finding seem to be the result of more than just everyday garbage disposal;
> they appear to represent something more along the lines of episodic
> housecleaning or the result of periodic household transitions.
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on this? We’d love to incorporate the ideas
> and observations of our archaeological brethren. Tell us about your hollow
> features, what you found in them, and how you interpreted them.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Mary Praetzellis and Julia Costello