Wednesday, August 09, 2006

History Buffs Dig This, ahhhh, Crap

Literally.

"It's like a treasure hunt," said Randy Travers, 46, of Maplewood, Minn. "You never know what you're going to find."

He knows what he's hoping to find: bottles. Travers is among a group of Twin Cities collectors who go to great lengths — and depths — to find rare bottles from the turn of the 19th century and earlier by digging up old outhouse sites.

Outhouses were a repository for all household refuse, so privy digging is the archaeological version of Dumpster diving. The practice is growing as the massive bottle dumps of the late 1800s are excavated or paved over.

"When I heard my uncle say, 'I'm going to dig an outhouse,' I thought, 'How gross,' " said Travers, who tagged along some 30 years ago.

His aversion disappeared when he found an Anheuser-Busch beer bottle from 1890. Travers estimates that 60 percent of the 40,000 bottles he has found came from privy pits.

These are Vikings fans, folks...

1 comment:

rob said...

I'm not sure what your blog is about actually? Is this a post on privydiggers? Don't be fooled - Eddie and the privydiggers are actually way more civilized than other history hunters I know...