EXCITED archaeologists are sifting through the contents of 150-year-old New Zealand toilets to get a better understanding of the everyday lives of early settlers.
Although there is plenty of oral and written history, there are gaps which can only be answered by lifting the lid on the sanitary habits of pioneering families, they say.
About 30 of New Zealand's leading archeologists arrived in Wellington to start a five-week project to collect and document information from historic sites along an inner-city bypass route.
The old toilets, locally referred to as long-drops or dunnies, "are a really good source of material", senior archaeologist, Rick McGovern-Wilson, said at the site where the Tonks family lived in the mid-1800s.
"You would be surprised what people used to throw down their dunnies."
Although there is plenty of oral and written history, there are gaps which can only be answered by lifting the lid on the sanitary habits of pioneering families, they say.
About 30 of New Zealand's leading archeologists arrived in Wellington to start a five-week project to collect and document information from historic sites along an inner-city bypass route.
The old toilets, locally referred to as long-drops or dunnies, "are a really good source of material", senior archaeologist, Rick McGovern-Wilson, said at the site where the Tonks family lived in the mid-1800s.
"You would be surprised what people used to throw down their dunnies."