While we're in full pedantic flight, it was George Miller who did the Owens 
research but I think a Henry Miller description of the Owens bottling 
technology story would be far more lurid, steamy and popular with students 
and grown-ups alike.   That lip finishing technology would really get an 
interesting treatment.

Denis


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Thompson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2005 4:43 AM
Subject: Writing on Walls and pull tabs


> Just checked the Norfolk District website (my employer, the Norfolk 
> District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) where we used to have some images 
> of graffiti on the walls of one of the buildings in Fort Norfolk (c. 
> 1810 - part of the original coastal defense network). The grafitti had 
> been left by soldiers held captive there during th Civil War. I'll root 
> around and see if they don' show up somewhere else. My understanding of 
> Section 106, is that the archaeologist is required to report ANY and ALL 
> resources that might be significant encountered during investigations for 
> 106 regardless of whether or not they relate the items specificied in the 
> original documents (MOA or whatever).
>
> To fail to do so, would be like saying, "Well, we didn't find the remains 
> of the 1810 Fort, and we're not reporting the Paleo-Indian site that we 
> encountered while looking for it, because it wasn't specified in our 
> contract. This highlights the intense foolishness of saying that Section 
> 106 investigations should be "confined to the original research design" 
> specified in the investigation agreement. Using the "research design" as 
> an excuse to ignore resources not called out in that document is 
> unprofessional, irresponsible and unethical. This should not be a question 
> for any professional archaeologist.
>
> I lived across the street from a machinist here in Richmond who worked for 
> many years for the Reynolds Aluminium Company, on a team that developed 
> and continued (and probably continues) developing the pull-tab. These guys 
> don't write journal articles for "Journal of aluminum technology"; they're 
> practical factory guys. Product vendors don't usually design or 
> manufacture the containers into which their beverages are placed for sale; 
> they buy them from suppliers, like Reynolds, and use them at their 
> "bottling" or filling facilities. The can manufacturers are intimately 
> involved in the sale and set-up of filling machinery, but with some 
> possible exceptions, don't dictate to the producers which technology to 
> use at a particular location.
>
> Tieing the type of pull tab to a particular product probably only has 
> efficacy at the regional level, or even more locally, depending on the 
> product, where decisions about what filling technology to use at a 
> particular filling plant are made. The failure to recognize this allows 
> the projection of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century technology, 
> inappropriately, into the twentieth century.
>
> Go back and study Henry Miller's research on the development of Owens 
> process bottle production to get a feeling for the complexity of twentieth 
> century product delivery and don't fall into the trap of applying 
> anachronistic analytical techniques to materials for which they are not 
> appropriate.
>
> Tim T.
> bottled in pedantic bond
>