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