The problem is that the bottle cap IS generic.  Prior to the advent of national franchises, soda bottlers had their own "house brands."  As national brands became available, more and more bottlers offered fruit flavor and root beers from these sources, but many stuck with their house brands until at least the 1970s.  For all I know, some remote bottler may STILL use house brands.

House brands were capped with at least two types of decorations on the crown.  The most common type advertise the company.  For example, in El Paso, the Empire Bottling Co. had its name on its caps into the 1960s.

The second style was the generic cap.  These usually only had the name of the flavor, such as your Root Beer cap.  Unfortunately, there is nothing that I know about that will tie these generic caps to any bottler or even time period.

Sometimes, on the skirt of the crown cap, there is information about either the bottler or the manufacturer of the cap.  If yours has any of that (and not all do), you may be able to track down something that way.

Bill

Bill Lockhart
NMSU-A



>>> Peter Quantock <[log in to unmask]> 11/11/2010 9:53 AM >>>
This is a forward from a fellow student who is having trouble accessing the 
listserv.

Hi,

My name is Chris and I am an archaeology graduate student at  DU (Denver 
University).  Recently, excavations have been undertaken at  Amache, a WWII 
Japanese internment camp in CO.  During the excavations,  this bottle cap (see 
link below) was recovered.  As part of my historical  archaeology course, our 
capstone final project is an analysis of  artifacts from the site.  I have been 
unable to determine the source of  this particular bottle cap dues to its fairly 
generic nature and would appreciate any help anyone could  give such as an ID, 
or links to resources that could help identify this. It is possible the bottle 
cap does not even date to the early 1940's, but even that information would be 
helpful.

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2251/cappb.jpg 

thanks in advance!

Chris

____________________________
 

Peter C QuantockMA Candidate
Department of Anthropology
University of Denver