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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