A small group of amateur archaeologists in Philadelphia are digging into the city’s past — by excavating ancient outhouses.
Armed with shovels, roughly 15 “privy diggers” are exposing and exploring 300-year-old bathrooms buried beneath the city’s historic neighborhoods, searching for artifacts.
Their finds include glass bottles, pottery shards, and household items owners tossed into privies as trash. Some pieces can fetch hundreds — even thousands — of dollars among collectors.
For Philadelphia residents Matt Dunphy, an e-commerce engineer, and wife Melissa Dunphy, a composer with a doctorate in music, the fascination began when they bought a home with an old small theater, where magic shows used to take place.
The property in Old City had a deed dating back to 1745.
They began to renovate.
“When we first saw bits of pottery and old bottles in the dirt coming out of the ground, it piqued our curiosity about who lived here before us,” Matt told The Post.
The construction workers uncovered two old outhouses on their property, one the Dunphys excavated right away. Since then, they’ve dug up six privies in the vicinity and launched a podcast, “The Boghouse,” about their discoveries.
In Philly, people are legally allowed to keep what they find.
But the artifacts are only the beginning for the Dunphys.
Each new item sends them searching through newspaper archives, maps, tax records, and historical documents to learn about the people who once owned them.
“With so much waste and loss happening in the world, bringing these everyday items to the the surface and putting them together for the first time in hundreds of years feels a little bit like fighting entropy,” Matt said.
Still, the amateur excavators has sparked criticism from professional archaeologists who argue untrained hobbyists risk destroying valuable historical sites.
They say Philadelphia has done little to protect its buried history — unlike Boston or Alexandria, Va.
“I find it very easy to sympathize with real archaeologists,” Matt said. “You’re still paying off your student loans, and a bunch of dudes without so much as an associates degree are destroying historical sites hoping to find a blue bottle they can sell for a couple hundred bucks.
“But hopefully, together we can raise awareness and strengthen institutional-level protections for preserving and documenting our buried history.”
