An Analysis of Historic Glass Containers from St. George’s Caye, Belize

Summary

From 2009 to the present, an abundance of whole and partial glass bottle remains of various types have been recovered throughout excavations on St. George’s Caye, Belize. Much of the glass collection has been found within the island’s cemetery among an assemblage of various other historic artifacts. The majority of the bottles and bottle fragments have been identified as eighteenth and nineteenth century English cylindrical bottles. In 2016, analysis of this assemblage commenced in order to determine a date range for manufacture of the bottle sample using analysis methods designed by Jones (1986) and Carillo (1973) to estimate manufacture date through measurement. Jones and Carillo’s methods were used to date six whole dark green glass cylindrical bottles that have been recovered from the island. Bottle base and finish fragments have been dated based on physical indicators of style and method of manufacture present on the bottle fragments as described by Jones (1986). This evaluation includes lip to string lip ratio, lip and string rim style and style of base and pushup among other features. The results of this analysis will help to provide a relative date range for the deposit of the assemblage from the cemetery at St. George’s Caye.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16602