Bottles For Jam? An Example Of Recycling From A Post-Contact Archaeological Site

Abstract

The study of material culture from post-contact archaeological sites is a crucial and necessary component of Australian historical archaeology. Currently material culture is analysed as if it were unproblematic, a given, which is no doubt due to the closeness of the artefacts used in Australia's past to the repertoire of contemporary material culture. This familiarity is seen as an advantage by historical archaeologists such as Stanley South (1977:84) who notes that some artefacts have 'a clear indication of functional use as a result of the archaeologists familiarity with the objects from his [sic] own culture'. However, when considering contemporary material culture, it is apparent that quite complex systems of distribution, use, recycling, redistribution and discard are operating. The question of whether similar systems existed in the past needs to be addressed before archaeologists leap to assumptions about the function and the significance of the artefacts they recover. This paper takes the view that material culture is problematic and that artefact functions cannot be assumed without research and the development of mid-range theory that takes into account processes such as recycling. Glass bottles have been of particular concern, requiring research to identify basic technological and functional categories before moving onto other readings (Morgan 1990; Stuart in press). An important issue in this research is that of the life cycle of bottles and functional changes in bottles via recycling (see Baugher-Perlin 1982; Busch 1987; Hill 1982). This paper discusses an example of such changes; the transformation of a 'beer bottle' to a 'jam jar'. Â