Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century bottle glass from Ferryland, Newfoundland

Abstract

In 1621, Captain Edward Wynne (along with 11 settlers) established a colony at Ferryland, Newfoundland, on behalf of George Calvert. Recent archaeological excavations uncovered a number of structures associated with this initial settlement as well as those built later. These excavations also uncovered over 1,000,000 artifacts, including thousands of fragments of wine and case bottles. Although the historical record suggests that the inhabitants of Ferryland were avid consumers of alcohol, there are few direct references to glass bottles or other containers associated with alcohol consumption. Thus, the analysis of bottle fragments will provide answers to several questions relating to consumption as well as social status. Four different glass assemblages representing different functional areas and time periods were examined in order to identify any changes over time. Such an analysis required the formulation of a model that allowed for the accurate dating of fragments. Based on a number of measurements taken on bottles of known dates or those excavated from well-dated contexts, this model provides a means not only for dating fragments uncovered in future excavations at the Ferryland site but on other historic archaeological sites of the period.