__"We kneel to no prince but the Prince of Peace!"
Posted on 09/26/2017 2:11:27 PM PDT by Red Badger
BOSTON (CBS) — Workers digging at the Paul Revere house in the city’s North End believe they may have found an archaeological jackpot that could give them a unique window into history–the Revere family outhouse.
The possible privy site was discovered Monday, and diggers were attempting to open it up Tuesday to investigate.
Archeological dig going on outside Paul Revere's House in the North End. What will they find? pic.twitter.com/1rBgv7hAL5
— Doug Cope (@dcopewbz) September 26, 2017
City Archaeologist Joe Bagley told WBZ NewsRadio 1030’s Doug Cope that a find like this is important because people back in the Colonial Era threw a lot of stuff in their privies–stuff that could give insight into their lives.
“You’d fill it up with you-know-what, and then also your household waste, because everyone threw their trash out into that,” Bagley said. “We’re hoping to find the individuals’ waste themselves, which, we can get seeds from what they were eating, we can find parasites, find out what their health was, but then everything else that they threw out from their house.”
He said the team found a four-by-six-foot brick rectangle–too small to be the foundation for a house or a shed.
Pouring over potential artifacts from 1700's at archeological dig on Revere family property in the North End. pic.twitter.com/ng2lehT79T
— Doug Cope (@dcopewbz) September 26, 2017
“Typically what you would do is you would dig a big pit, you’d line it with bricks,” Bagley said. “You typically would also line it with clay, because you didn’t want the contents to leach into your well.”
But the only way to confirm the true nature of the find was to dig into the potentially gross contents.
“We love finding privies,” said Bagley. “We think we have one. The only way to find out is to dig down into it and see if it has that nightsoil–that kind of smelly, dark soils which are now composted and not that bad, but they might have a stench still, a little bit.”
Digging in what might have been Revere family privy outside Paul Revere house in the North End. Pieces of coal found pic.twitter.com/DnP9IYvBk5
— Doug Cope (@dcopewbz) September 26, 2017
The archaeological team has already found the handle to a German-made beer stein from the 1700s, as well as pieces of coal.
“If we start finding thousands of artifacts, then we really know we’re in a really important feature,” Bagley said.
Piece of beer stein from the 1700's found at archeological dig outside Revere family property in the North End. pic.twitter.com/JN1tOhnvDB
— Doug Cope (@dcopewbz) September 26, 2017
Bagley said that there was a law in place in Boston starting in 1650 mandating that every household dig their privy at least six feet deep–but that doesn’t mean everyone followed the law.
“I expect that, at most, we’ll have to go down that full six feet,” Bagley said. “I hope it’s six feet deep, because that gives us the best opportunity to find a lot of things from multiple families.”
The home has been a fixture in the North End since around 1711.
I laughed so hard I choked.
A privy in the smokehouse?
Mom, this meant tastes like $#^(!
That entire site was private property and has been secured by a land trust for the state.
The “patch” was discovered through some sort of optical analysis.
__"We kneel to no prince but the Prince of Peace!"
I wonder if they’ll find the midnight roid of Paul Revere.
You’re baaaad!.........................
One guess is as good as another.
I had hear it was corn cobs, or possibly corn husks, or both?
We know what they will find, a piece of Brady
At my place in the mountains I use wood ash, since I am not saving it for soap making. Between fall and spring, when we don’t visit, it looses it’s odor.
Bob Kraft’s lost Superbowl Ring?.....................
Above is a link to your secret map and the lost colony - cool stuff.
I used to work in New Jersey doing remote sensing for old dump sites, hazardous waste, etc.
One client, in relating what they had found when I told them where to dig related the usual buried debris and drums in one area, but in one of my spots they dug up an outhouse. They found some unbroken bottles, old buttons, etc. dating back to the Revolutionary War era. They just kept the stuff - no archaeologists or anything. That was 30 years ago - I'm guessing procedures have changed by now.
I’m a history/archeology junkie! I think this is sooo cool!!! P.R.’s trash!!!
I’ve been to Williamsburg at least 25 times or more. You find an outhouse, you find archeological gold.
Spend at least at least one long weekend a year going to someplace historic in the mid-Atlantic.....and with an outlet mall. LOL!
We use to have a Freeper here, SunkenCiv who did archeology threads all the time. Miss him/her dearly. Fantastic posts.
He's back. You can ask him to put you on his ping list on his latest thread:
In our neck of the woods, the "little house out behind the big house" had a large bin of brown corncobs, and a small bin of white corncobs...
Yeah, I was trying to forget about the corncobs. :^)
Fresh corn cobs or leaves. . .
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