05 Oct more pockets of everyday 19th century bottles discovered in a chicago dumping ground

i will kick off from a previous post… “the vast scattering of excavation sites in and around downtown chicago have provided a dizzying, seemly endless amount of artifacts discarded by chicagoans of the 19th century. the quantity of “hutchinson” type soda or mineral water bottles alone is impressive to say the least. moreso, the sheer variety of medicinal bottles, chinaware and condiment bottles extracted from these dump sites has offered tremendous insight into what was consumed during various decades of 19th century chicago.”

so here we are again, with perhaps the biggest “pocket” yet of bottles and “trash” left behind by 19th century chicagoans. we literally unearthed hundreds of bottles, china (including a “mustache cup”), and miscellaneous artifacts. as i write this post the majority of the bottles are soaking while waiting to be cleaned and photographed. i managed to devote a few hours to cleaning some of these remarkable finds and photographing them in a seemingly spontaneous manner. see the image gallery for the assemblage resting on the john kent russell house (1855) privy-pit tongue and groove white pine wood floor extracted from the ground late last year. many more artifacts from this dump site will be posted in the coming days.

additional finds from this parcel of land containing “pockets” of landfill are arriving daily. so difficult to keep up with cleaning, documenting and posting these remarkable 19th century artifacts discarded by chicagoans living in a different time. it’s truly mind boggling to contemplate the immense scale of bottles and artifacts waiting to be unearthed.