Susan:
 
Don't know of a referrence that can be of help, but I am aware of an
early 20th century house constructed entirely of beer bottles in the
mining town of Rhyolite, Nevada.  The walkway leading up to the front
door is also constructed of complete bottles that have been
intentionally buried with their bottoms up to form the walk surface of
this landscape feature.  Naturally when bottles are "dumped" they have a
tendancy to lay flat unless they are propted up by adjacent bottles, at
which point they would be at an angle.  If your bottom-up bottles were
found without supporting bottles, than it could be assumed that the
positioning was intentional rather than random.  Context of both bottle
positioning and within the site is the key.  Good luck......ww
 
Susan Lebo wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> I am working on a site, which was excavated by someone else. This site was
> interpreted by them as a "bottle cache" on the basis of bottle orientation.
> They found that many of the bottles visible on the surface appeared to be
> bottom up, suggesting that the bottles were "cached" rather than simply
> discarded. Other surface bottles were found in a variety of orientations and
> most of the buried examples were also found in various orientations. Whereas
> much of what was recorded on the surface were whole bottles, numerous broken
> bottle sherds as well as sherds from ceramic vessels were found on the
> surface or buried.
>
> I have been assigned the task of writing up the interpretation of this site
> and feel uncomfortable discussing it as a "bottle cache." First, it is not
> limited to bottle discard. Second, while some of the bottles may be bottom
> up, this is not a consistent attribute nor does this lend me to believe the
> bottles were "intensionally placed." This feature is on a ridge slope and
> several nearby slopes have domestic dumps containing primarily bottles, but
> some ceramics, metal, etc. I would interpret it as a dump.
>
> Can anyone recommend any references where someone has clearly defined a
> "cache" vs. a "dump?"
>
> Thank you in advance. susan