Netherlands

Historical Cesspits

Dutch archaeologists meet with the unique situation that medieval and early modern urban household waste is well preserved. From the 14th century up until the 19th century, households made use of cesspits for discarding their waste. The huge underground pits, made of bricks, were mostly located at the backs of houses. The pits contain not only human feces and urine but also household residue such as food, broken plates, cups, glasses, and textiles. Some cesspits were in use for centuries and, as a result, can contain unique chronological collections of pottery and glass. The contents provide information on typologies in pottery and glass and also are informative regarding the social status and consumption patterns of individual households.

Archaeologists are aware that the contents of cesspits provide only a fragmented view of the household furniture; wood, glass, and metal objects, for example, are rarely found. Also, regional differences in the availability and value of goods make it difficult to get a clear picture of how rich or poor each household was. Despite such distorting factors, reconstructing social status is one of the main goals of Dutch cesspit research. Pits loaded with valuable finds are interpreted as representing rich households, whereas pits containing little or poor material are thought to correspond with the lives of poorer families. However, this way of interpreting waste has come under serious criticism.

Looking at waste from a less functional and more contextual view, attention is shifting from what people threw away to how they threw it away. It is realized that there is yet little contextual information on how the discarding of waste was organized: who was responsible for discarding the waste in richer and poorer households? What possible categories of household waste were there? In some cities, it appears that members of poor households disposed different kinds of waste (such as pottery, food, textiles, and feces) together in one cesspit, whereas in rich contexts, some cesspits were solely used as a latrine. This might be the result of household activities being more spatially separated in rich homes and by the fact that servants and main household members often occupied separate living areas. From that point of view, a cesspit with few finds would not refer to poverty at all.

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