Archaeologists excited over old toilets!

IAFRICA ^ | Posted Thu, 20 Jan 2005 | AFP

[vannrox]

Archaeologists excited over old toilets

Posted Thu, 20 Jan 2005

Excited archaeologists are sifting through the contents of 150-year-old New Zealand toilets to get a better understanding of the everyday lives of early settlers.

Although there is plenty of oral and written history, there are gaps which can only be answered by lifting the lid on the sanitary habits of pioneering families, they say.

About 30 of New Zealand's leading archaeologists arrived in Wellington on Thursday to start a five-week project to collect and document information from historic sites along an inner-city bypass route.

The old toilets, locally referred to as long-drops or dunnies, "are a really good source of material", senior archaeologist, Rick McGovern-Wilson, said at the site where the Tonks family lived in the mid-1800s.

"You would be surprised what people used to throw down their dunnies."

The Tonks family, who ran a brickworks and set up steam mills and a shipping company in the area, had lived alongside their workers and archaeologists expect to find evidence of the different social standing of the residents.

"Bones will tell us that. You would expect the Tonks' probably ate roast mutton (leg bone) while rib bones would show their workers were eating mutton flaps," McGovern-Wilson said.

[SunkenCiv]

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