Aqua Patent Bottle Fragments (Archaeological Find)

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Embossed words visible include “COMPOUND” and “SARSA” as well as “U.S.A.” and the second half of the name of the city of Lowell, where the bottle was manufactured.

Neck and base of the bottle. Seams from a mold are visible on the neck, and a pontil mark can be seen on the base, which is flat with no noticeable kick-up.

An undated ad for Hood's Sarsaparilla detailing its many health benefits. Sarsaparilla was commonly used at home to cure a variety of ailments, many of which were broadly defined.

An ad for Hood's Sarsaparilla published in the Ann Arbor Argus on April 8, 1898 including a testimonial from a nursing mother. Sarsaparilla was marketed to everyone as a common household cure-all.

Title:

Aqua Patent Bottle Fragments

Subject:

In the colonial period, little was known about health, so practices to address it were suspect. Most medications were self-prescribed and administered, as doctors were scarce and often poorly trained. This led to a proliferation of patent or proprietary medicines that continued into the 20th Century (Lindsey 2016). Colonial medications were naturally derived, and marketed to cure a wide variety of illnesses. Most popular in the mid-19th Century, sarsaparilla contained 18% alcohol and was made from root extracts (Lindsey 2016, Griffin 2014). It was thought to purify the blood and even cure heart disease, edema, rheumatism and scrofula (Griffin 2014). As a medication, sarsaparilla may have escaped scrutiny under the alcohol rules of the college.

This bottle was produced by C.I. Hood & Co. of Lowell, Massachusetts. The company was founded in 1875, and produced a number of medicines including sarsaparilla (Griffin 2014). Hood’s and its main competition, Ayer’s Sarsaparilla, were some of the biggest pharmaceutical advertisers of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when sarsaparilla use started to become less medicinal (Lindsey 2016).

In the early colonial period, pharmaceutical bottles were characterized by conical kick-ups that flattened by the mid-19th Century (Hume 1969, 73). Rectangular glass bottles with indented panels were popular throughout the 19th Century, with embossed words appearing at the height of the patent medicine boom in the second half of the century (Lindsey 2016). Regulations on drug labeling and manufacturing didn’t arise until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, so most early patent medicine bottles (such as this one) were embossed with the contents and name of the manufacturer (Lindsey 2016).

Source:

Griffin, Jessica. 2014. “Hood’s Sarsaparilla, Lowell, MA.” Old Main Artifacts website, January 21. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://oldmainartifacts.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/hoods-sarsaparilla-lowell-ma/.

Hume, Ivor Noël. 1969. A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America. New York: Knopf.

Lindsey, Bill. 2016. “Bottle Typing/Diagnostic Shapes: Medicinal/Chemical/Druggist Bottles.” Society for Historical Archaeology website, November 20. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://sha.org/bottle/medicinal.htm.

Object Name:

Aqua Patent Bottle Fragments

Inventory Description:

Aqua patent bottle made with a mold. It is embossed HOOD'S / COMPOUND / EXTRACT / SARSA / PARILLA - C. I. HOOD & CO - LOWELL MASS. It dates to the late 1890's or early 1900's and contained one of the most popular sarsaparilla brands of the time.

Peabody Number:

2016.29.61

Culture/Period:

1890's-early 1900's

Intrasite:

H933 Level 1

Depth:

47-56cm

Class 1:

Glass

Class 2:

Bottle glass

Class 3:

Aqua bottle glass

Quantity:

Height (cm):

11.9

Width (cm):

6.9

Depth/Thickness (cm):

4.3

Collection:

2017 Assignment 2

Tags:

19, 20, glass