The vast majority of privies in the 1880s were mere holes in the ground. By 1895, the city estimated that there were still 2,500 "filth pits."

While people at the time thought little of them, privies of old are now yielding a wealth of artifacts.

Archaeologists who dug up and researched the throwaways found in the subterranean regions of downtown outhouses have now handed the artifacts to Sacramento museum officials.

Where a huge state building now stands, the archaeologists found the stuff of everyday life: bottles, buttons, combs, spittoons, chamber pots and all kinds of animal bones.

"Some would say it is junk, but it tells us about consumerism and tracks the development of an area," said Marcia Eymann, manager of the Sacramento Archives & Museum Collection Center.

The archaeological dig was done in 2000 prior to construction of the state's Capitol East End Project. The dig took place over five city blocks, mostly between 15th and 17th and L and M streets.

"There were very wealthy people in the area. Then it goes to middle class and then poorer class," said Eymann.

The archaeological company working for the state provided a detailed report on the artifacts to the state Department of General Services.

Recently, the artifacts were turned over to the Archives & Museum Collection Center so that people can better understand how the city's pioneers lived.

Eventually, the items will be put on display.

The artifacts, which come from privies, are now in 157 boxes shelved in the museum's North Highlands archival space.

Before indoor plumbing, people had outhouses in the yard with 9-foot-deep holes.

When indoor plumbing arrived, the hole in the ground had to be filled in. And that is where archaeologists found artifacts, according to "Archaeology of the Capitol Area East End Complex" by Keith Warren, M. Colleen Hamilton and Wendy Nettles.

Archaeologists found artifacts such as perfume bottles, saucers, oyster shells, clay pipes, buttons, mirrors, syringes, shoes and doll heads.

They also found the bones of sheep, cattle, chicken, ducks and jackrabbit – providing evidence of the dietary habits of people a century ago.

Back then even rich people, such as the Gruhlers, who owned a brewery, ate jackrabbit. That is until matriarch Catherine died in 1891.

"The virtual disappearance of jackrabbit from the Gruhler diet (based on privy deposits) may be attributable to the matriarch's personal preference," stated the report.

"Perhaps it was a choice they did not appreciate and after Catherine's death, jackrabbit was banished from the table."

The archaeological work was done in what was called the Capitol Neighborhood – blocks just to the east of Capitol Park that were settled as early as the 1850s. Pioneers built estates on large lots.

The inhabitants were the moneyed movers and shakers of the new city – bankers, brewers and merchants. It was a fashionable neighborhood once the Capitol was complete around 1870.

The Gruhlers owned the Columbus Brewery at the corner of K and 16th streets. Founder Christian Gruhler, who died of liver disease in 1878, and his wife dressed their boys in alpaca coats, dined on canned lobster and maintained a fine mansion, according to the report by Applied EarthWorks.

By 1915, the neighborhood had changed because wealthier people had moved. Abandonment of the area seems to be related to the development of suburbia – made possible by trolleys linking work downtown with places such as east Sacramento and Oak Park.

Houses were subdivided into boardinghouses and apartments started to be built. By the 1930s it was largely a rental district, with commercial structures that had migrated to the neighborhood.

The report provides descriptions of the thousands of items found in privies. Most of the artifacts dated from the 1870s through the 1910s.

"People just threw things down the privy," said Hamilton, an archaeologist for Applied EarthWorks Inc.

"If you didn't want people to know you were drinking, your bottle went into the hole. It really does give you a good time capsule."

Dishes were heavily gilded and even chamber pots were highly decorated. The dig found that the rich pioneers bought large, fancy dinner sets for entertaining.

"Clearly with the Gruhlers, the parents had passed away and the children didn't have the same taste because they were throwing away all the dishes," said Hamilton. "They wanted new. They didn't like mom's old stuff."

History books often don't tell much about personal habits, said Hamilton. But privy archaeology does, she said.

Call The Bee's Bill Lindelof, (916) 321-1079.