Bottles, Booze, and Boats: An Analysis of the Presence of Dutch Genever Bottles on Age of Sail Shipwrecks

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Although excessive alcohol consumption among mariners is a stereotype, there has been surprisingly little critical scholarly work on the subject or analysis of its archaeological footprint on shipwrecks. During the Age of Sail, the Netherlands issued alcohol rations of genever (jenever in Dutch) to crew members in the Admiralty, East and West India Company, as well as on smaller vessels. Since the Dutch stored genever in distinctive bottles, the archaeological record is helpful to examine Dutch ship’s genever consumption. Perhaps material evidence of genever can be used to aid in identifying a shipwreck’s nationality. This is tested through analysis of a sample of European wrecks. There is a strong correlation between the presence of both case bottles (kelderflessen) and, later in the period, stoneware bottles (jeneverkruiken) with Dutch shipwrecks or maritime archaeology sites and this is suggested to consider for archaeologists faced with a shipwreck of unknown origin.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow