APR.18th digging results

I said last weeks Privy was old...well this one was even older! We didn't make it out to do the time capsule yet due to funky weather, so we decided to go back to the parking lot where I've been finding privies one after the other. Dan and I started around 11:00 am probing for at least one more pit along the fence making this the 4th one. We started a test hole on a suspicious spot that took about an hour to determine that it was a dud.

Around 1:00 we started another test hole that seemed to have more positve signs. Lots of brick and metal. There were really no bottle pieces as we were digging down, but we knew we were in a pit by the depth of the "man made debris" that kept showing up foot by foot. About 2 feet down we got our only piece of bottle till we got down to the use layer. It was an early applied top neck. This hole went down 6 feet before we hit the use layer. We knew it would be an old hole because of that.
The first piece Dan pulled out was a stunning pontiled huge umbrella ink shaped bottle with a top like a scroll flask. Yes it was broken. We are not sure what it is, but it looks like a master umbrella ink? Then we started to get excited. This pit was extermely ancient. I'm sure it was one of the first privies in the town! As is the case with most of the pits of this age (1830's), the pit has almost no bottles what so ever in it. On the other hand it was full of broken dinner ware that we have never seen before, probably 3 laundry baskets full. Some of the pieces looked like they were made by natives. These types of pits are rare to find and fun to excavate, even though there are no bottles to be had. They simply didn't have that many bottles in this time period to through away!

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