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UMass Amherst Collections
Browse Massachusetts Historic Bottles Collection

The Massachusetts Historic Bottle Collection represents a subset of historic glass bottles recovered by University of Massachusetts Archaeological Services from multiple archaeological sites in Massachusetts. The bottles originated from the Ephraim Skerry House in Salem (17th-19th c), a site near Silver Lake in Bellingham (early to mid-20th c), the Cohasset Round House site of the Greenbush Line Restoration project (mid 19th- mid 20th c) and a house site near the wharf in Newburyport (19th c). The bottles have a variety of attributes that are useful to archaeologists studying historic sites. The attributes include presence or absence of seams which determine manufacturing process and time period; embossed lettering or symbols that are used to identify the company who produced the bottle; bottle form and closure type which change over time. The bottle collection was assembled and researched by UMass student Ruth Lewis under the guidance of Julie Woods, UMAS Laboratory Supervisor. The digital collection was photographed by UMass student Larissa Blitz under the guidance of Brian Shelburne, Head, Image Collection Library and Annie Sollinger, Metadata Librarian, of the Digital Scholarship Center (formerly known as the Image Collection Library). For more information about the archaeological sites and the bottle collection, please contact UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology: http://www.umass.edu/anthro/