Privy digging
From a conventional academic perspective, it is assumed that all privies contain vital and unique information which cannot be found elsewhere and that a costly forensic approach is required.
These dipped vaults do not have an undisturbed night soil layer and the probability of one containing anything of major archaeological importance is extremely low.
Adept privy diggers develop considerable skill interpreting the faint residues which come up on the end of a probe and the subtle noise variations encountered while sliding it in and out of the ground.
Due to extreme odors and overfilling, a high percentage of privy vaults were cleaned out, to varying levels, while still in use.
Alternatively, a small percentage of shallow vaults extending down about 3 feet or less have contained noteworthy bottles, numerous fragments of dinner plates, cups, bowls, pitchers, tobacco pipes, clam and oyster shells, food bones and even sparse night soil pockets around the edges.
During the mid 19th century operators connected to the booming waste-generated fertilizer (night soil) business circulated cities and towns emptying vaults.
Despite lying in human waste and other decaying refuse for years, many recyclable bottles of the time, and other reusable items, were retrieved during the dipping process.
[7] The evidence suggests that not all dippers were equally concerned with being meticulous and periodically dozens of bottles, and even some night soil, can still be found while privy digging.
Due to the enormous quantities of everyday garbage being produced by this time in history, not to mention the hundreds of millions of bottles sold each year in the United States alone, the vaults would have filled up very quickly requiring constant maintenance instead of being emptied just every so often.
Preferred places were lowland areas near the edges of towns and cities, down embankments and into ravines, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, bogs, shorelines, backyard burning pits and other locales.
For example, New York City sent scows brimming with garbage out into the harbor everyday where very cheap labor shoveled it directly into the water without a second thought.
[7] This process went on for centuries and an endless supply of collectable items, antiques and archaeological information alike remain in these dumping places to this day.
A sterile mixture of dirt, sand, rocks, ashes, brick bats and other worthless debris manufactured around 1880–1920 was used to backfill privies once plumbing was installed at a particular address.
The high percentage of broken items is one reason why privy digging is one of the most unpredictable and arduous methods of attempting to form a bottle collection.
There are exceptions and over time some groups of regularly active diggers, operating in good locations, will encounter thousands of antique bottles and other interesting things.
Not unlike dump diggers privy diggers may also encounter miscellaneous tableware (banded ware,[8] redware, mocha,[9] and other slipwares), stoneware, occasionally clay pipes, doll parts, tea set pieces, marbles, buttons, chamber pots, decorative porcelain pot lids[10] and bases used for pomades and skin creams, bone or ivory toothbrush handles, hard-rubber combs and hair picks, ambrotypes, and other objects which are usually broken or damaged.
[1] Most of these items were valueless and intentionally discarded into the privy, others fell through the opening in the outhouse seat, and some were lost at the hands of small children.
[11] In each instance the insides of active vaults were very caustic environments, the highly toxic ingredients causing most things to break down and rot very quickly.
Career level diggers are obsessive by nature, sometimes achieving considerable skill with the various forms of privy digging techniques available.
[12] Early examples of machine made bottles manufactured between about 1906 and 1915 often resemble their predecessors in shape and color and can be nominally valuable for that reason.
Whether found in privies or dumps late period mouth-blown bottles manufactured between about 1880-1915 have a lesser amount of serious collectable potential depending on rarity, condition and color.
Although privy diggers usually attempt to focus on the contents of vaults built before the Civil War, these too can also contain bottles made as late as the 1920s or later up near the top.
[13] No matter what is encountered near the top assuming a given vault was active in 1850 its potential for older bottles lying at a lower section has a consistently strong draw for serious privy diggers.
[14] The decades just prior to the absence of pontil rods from bottle-glass making were a time when endless variations pertaining to shape, size, style, color and embossing were being produced regularly in an unprecedented quantity.
Even after the pontil rod was replaced by assorted clamping mechanisms known as “snap cases”, many bottles were still being created in the same interesting molds and sold in huge quantities annually.
