A 1,500-Year-Old Riddle Solved: Yes, It Was a Terra-Cotta Porta-Potty
The New York Times
The proof was in the, er, concretion.
Archaeologists working at ancient Roman sites commonly find ceramics, but it is not always easy to know what these objects were used for. Wine storage? Food transportation? Tableware? Or were they purely decorative? Experts often disagree. But now a team of researchers working at a Roman site that dates from about 450 to 500 A.D. have definitive proof that one of the pots they found was a portable toilet.
The terra-cotta pot, described Thursday in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, was found in the ruins of a villa near the Italian town of Gerace in Sicily. The pot is round with sloping sides, standing a foot high and 13 inches wide at the rim. The authors suggest that it could have been used by sitting on it, but more likely it was placed beneath a timber or wicker chair equipped with a cover over a suitable hole.
Chamber pots have been found at various ancient archaeological digs. One was found recently at a 2,700-year-old site in Jerusalem; another, dating from 1,300 B.C., was excavated at the Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna. Chamber pots from as early as the sixth century B.C. have also been found in Greece.
