Archaeologists Find Message in a Bottle at a Viking Site

Post Reply New Topic

https://www.newsweek.com/message-bottle-found-archaeologist-viking-site-1992507

I'm disappointed it doesn't have a DIY recipe like in Animal Crossing.

Was it the one Sting wrote?

Bottle does not to my first glance look that old. I didn't go any further as cookie thing came up, but I know glass bottles after digging out old midens with my family as a child. We spent a whole summer down a hole!

So here are my general observations about bottles...

Bottle design I briefly saw in the picture is wrong shape to be any more than around 200 years old at a guess. (I maybe wrong but I only saw a brief glimpse).
Bottles made 350+ years old built to contain pressurized type alcoholic drinks or similar (E.g. ginger beer etc) did not have flat bottoms as were stored horizontally to keep their corks wet so they would not leak and we found a bottle which was around 400 years old, and a few examples of early flat bottomed type which were the the origional older curved shape but the pointy end had been made flat which was the first stage in the transition from the torpedo shape to the modern shape.
One can also date early examples by the tops, as very early examples looked like they had broken tops but it was not broken. In other words, they did not have "Formed" tops like all bottles have today.

Flat bottoms came in with mass production when production levels increased, so needed to be shipped out in bulk. The flat bottoms making it easier to sell them in shops or where the contents were drank sooner rather than being stored. Prior to the flat bottomed bottles, for non-pressurized drinks, it was far more common to find clay bottles Glass was generally used for fizzydrinks or alcoholic drinks that contwined pressure). If one goes back to Viking days, one is looking at clay bottles, or possibly the older method of using pouches such as wineskins instead of fixed shape containers.... Though various shapes of jar were used, and glass did exist.

Don't forget that glass bottles with a seem down the side, which were made in two halves and melted together mostly date from about 150 years ago or younger, as this is a more modern invention where large quantities of bottles are made at the same time and heated up in a large bottle furnace together. Older bottles were made individually one at a time via the glass blowing method but blown into moulds, if I understand correctly.

There are simple ways to date bottles according to how they were made, how thick the glass is, and what style they are etc. Yes, they come in different shapes and sizes, but they do follow some defined technical advancements in manufacturing at certain dates, so one can generally put an "Earliest example" date to them and take a guess from there! (No doubt a few bottle manufacturers were still a few years behind others, but one thing about dating is that if one notices certain things, the bottles won't be earlier than a certain date that the technique was first invented if that makes sense?
Also remember in the early days of bottles (E.g. before they were made in mass in larger furnaces, so had visible seems down the side), bottles themselves were expensive to make, so that they only used glass bottles when they had to. So we are talking about wines and fizzy drinks which were expensive in their day, so would be bought and stored for a special occasion. Wasn't a case that they would be drunk regularly, which is why such bottles like the old torpedo types are harder to find.
I am going to look to see if the site lets me remove the big cookie notice that covers the screen!



Edit. I thought there was no way it was a Viking bottle! 1879... Yes. It looks about that style to say it was that date. A mass produced bottle.