Parasites and Sanitation in Eighteenth-Century Newport, Rhode Island: The Pratt, Brown, and Tate Families

Archaeologists see privies as goldmines of information, as assemblages of materials that can tell us much about people's daily lives. The artifacts excavated from privies were not saved deliberately and, in fact, no one who put anything in one ever thought it would come back out. Broken dishes, a button, or a pin: no one would ever try to retrieve those things. Even less would a person be thinking about the human intestinal parasites that can tell us about diet, sanitation, yard use and gardening, domestic animals, and, of course, health. Can we look at parasite levels, specific species, and life cycles and say something about the daily lives and relative status of three households in the thriving commercial town of Newport? We can, although this is an area of study that is still developing. In this essay, three eighteenth-century privies from Newport, Rhode Island, will be discussed in terms of the questions they can help us answer about the levels of health and sanitation for each of these households and how those relate to their residents' experiences and status within the larger community. The parasites from these privies, along with seeds, bones, and artifacts, will be used to help illuminate an eighteenth-century landscape of daily life, sanitation, health, and illness.