Dear House Cleaners,
 
Many thanks for all your thoughtful comments. We all seem to be on a similar
track identifying those large caches of artifacts as some short-term, episodic
event. Some part of a household change: death, marriage, new occupants,
winning the lottery....  We can especially see this when our crossmends link
fragments scattered from the top to the bottom. 
 
Now for a real puzzler: what about all the animal bones? These faunal
collections are often analyzed as though they represent household meals over
some longer period of time, but this does not fit with an episodic disposal.
And viturally all our “house cleanings” have a good number and variety of cow,
sheep, chicken, pig, fish, etc. Were the bones stashed for months, waiting to
be thrown into the privy when the occupants moved or grandma died? One well
Mary Praetzellis is analyzing for the Cypress project has crossmends
separated by as much as 10 feet of dirt, but more than 1,000 pounds of meat
represented! We don’t have frozen back porches in Oakland or Los Angeles,
so “waiting for the spring thaw” won’t work. How can we reconcile these
often impressive records of meal-taking with the “house cleaning” theory?
Any ideas here?