BOTTLES

There is a very large collection of late 19th-20th century bottles from the
excavations of the Richmond Floodwall project, including detailed
descriptions of embossing, etc. and drawings. Unfortunately, the majority of
these are from re-deposited or compromised contexts and are thus fairly low
on the priority for presentation. They would not have been collected at all
(in Virginia, where history stops in 1865) if I had not insisted on it, on
an opportunistic basis. The data is in Manuscript or simple spreadsheets,
and I hope I live long enough to get to it. The material, and copies of the
analysis are available the Curation facility of the Virginia Department of
Historic Resources.

Much of the collection is fragmentary, but there are many whole, or almost
whole, items which possess many of the manufacturing characteristics
described in the posts on this topic: three-molds, separate finishes, a wide
variety of machine made bottles of all content types. This material may not
be useful for re-use analysis given the questionable contexts, but for basic
artifact form I expect they will be of value eventually.

Our colleagues in the west, unencumbered by the long historic record which
tends to slight anything after the "War Between the States" have taken a
more agressive approach to dealing with this kind of material. If anyone is
interested in this material, please let me know, and I'll attempt to
facilitate access.
Tim Thompson