Out the Door

Out the Door. Daily Living. Cleanliness was not next to godliness in 17th-century Maryland. Most people considered bathing unhealthy and they rarely washed their clothing. Head lice were a common affliction. The early settlers used "sweet bags" of fragrant herbs to mask their ever-present odors., There were no bathrooms at that time. Only one outdoor privy from colonial times has been identified in St. Mary's City, but fragments of indoor chamber pots are common., Trash was simply thrown out the door in surface piles called middens. Archaeologists find clues about how buildings and yards were used by examining the location and contents of trash middens. Broken pottery, animal bones, oyster shells, and organic wastes can suggest where 17th-century doors, gates, and pathways once existed., [Captions:] , Deposits of organic waste, including human waste, cause phosphate concentrations. This map shows a fairly clean front yard inside the fence, but a major peak near a gate. A big cluster in the back yard matches a trash midden, while peaks around corners of the quarter represent out-of-site locations where people answered nature's call., Trash was thrown into middens like this one at the Godiah Spray Plantation. Free ranging chickens and pigs picked through the trash for edibles., "...make a soft fire and put quick-silver therein and hang the lousy garments over the smoake. Comb it near the fire for nits..." , To drive lice away , Thomas Palmer, , The Admirable Secrets of Physick and Chyrugey, 1636, This small bone comb had closely space teeth on one side to remove lice from human hair. This type of comb is the most common variety found during archaeological excavations.