December 9th 2007 Privy Dig
Well todays dig started off late, Really late I got a
call about 6:30 in the evening from Matt in philly telling me he had a
construction site that had been dug down about 5 feet leaving the
bottom five feet of a bunch of prives exposed. It was in a part of
philly that dated from the 1860s. Matt said that most of the pits on
the site he had dug had a couple feet of trash in the bottom. So I
jumped in my truck and headed north armed with lights and warm clothes.
Got there about 8:00 and talked to a couple other diggers on the site.
And met up with Matt he was pretty tired from digging all day and the
guy he was digging with had to leave. We started another pit. This was
a round brickliner we got down about 4 feet and the heavy clay and
bricks this pit was filled with gave way to about a foot of dark loam
full of 1860s-70s artifacts. We found a bunch of smooth based umbrella
inks and marbles and a nice blue J. Wise Squat from Allentown Pa. but
that was it. Matt was pretty beat an it was about 11:00 when we
finished that pit. I was still pretty fresh and wanted to do another
pit. Matt decided he had enough so we split up our finds he won the flip and took the blue squat and
I got the rest of the crap from the
privy. Then I called George and asked him to come help me dig the
second pit. This pit was a bit deeper then the first. It had about 6
feet of heavy clay and brick then gave way to a couple feet of nice
loamy soil full of 1860s bottles. we found several Squat sodas from
philly. One was iron pontiled and we also found a nice intact redware ovoid jug. We also found all the pieces to a couple slipware pie plates.
We hit the bottom at about 8 feet. This pit had quite a few nice finds
in it. Me and George split up our finds and called it a night just
short of 4 am.
Here's a picture of my share of the finds from both
privies.
