Refuse Pits
Eight refuse pits were identified during the course of excavation. The shapes varied from circular to oblong with considerable range in depth. In most instances, however, the bottoms were flat, or nearly so. The five examples of pits with a circular outline ranged from 1.2 feet to 3 feet in diameter and from 1 to 1.5 feet in depth. The three oblong pits ranged from 2.5 to 3.8 feet wide, from 4 to 5 feet long, and from 1.8 to 2.7 feet in depth. Two of the refuse pits were associated with houses—one with House 1 and the other with House 3. These will be described as associations with these houses. Feature 13, a refuse pit, was unusual in that it contained a number of broken vessels, bone awls, a drilled pottery disk and a considerable amount of animal bone and potsherds. The vessels were all jars ranging in size from small to large and were wide mouthed vessels. Most of these jars had strap handles while the two largest were decorated with crude incising on the shoulders and by a series of nodes punched from the inside, below that. A large broken vessel in one of the pits is shown in [Figure 29].
Figure 28. Shell Ornaments and Tools
(1. Marine shell beads. 2. Perforated mussel shell scraper or hoe.)
Little more can be said of these pits except that they represent a method of disposal of refuse but certainly not the standard approach to this problem.