Archaeology is the study of human history through physical remains. Archaeologists study everything from trash heaps to cities, and work to uncover things buried by time to try to understand the past. With archaeology, the past does not have to remain silent, as archaeological research gives a voice to those who were not given a voice in the historical record, but instead left their mark on the past in other ways.
Archaeology is everywhere that people have been, and even the smallest object can provide clues about the past. The grave goods recovered from Canaan Cemetery can tell us much about the people that came before us. To date, archaeological research at Canaan Cemetery has recovered over 400 artifacts, mostly made of glass and ceramic. Residents of Canaan and the surrounding settlements would likely have left other, more ephemeral types of grave goods as well, such as cigarettes, which did not preserve, leaving archaeological researchers with an overrepresentation of glass artifacts. Even the paper labels that some of the glass bottles would have likely had did not survive, making artifact identification more difficult.
The artifacts recovered from Canaan Cemetery have been identified based on tiny clues, like the color of the glass. Does the glass have a light purple or amethyst color? If so, this is solarized glass. A major component of glass is silica, found in sand and which also contains iron, an impurity. The iron gives the glass a greenish-blue tint, and, the more iron in the sand, the more green the glass. To offset this discoloration and ensure clear glass, other ingredients were added to the sand mixture, called decolorizers. The most popular decolorizer was manganese dioxide, which reacted with the iron in a way that rendered both elements colorless. However, over time, glass which has been made with manganese oxide and has subsequently been exposed to sunlight will turn purple. The manganese oxide will photo-oxidize when exposed to ultraviolet light, causing the purple color in some of the artifacts you see here today. Manganese was a common additive throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which helps narrow the date range for artifacts exhibiting this color.
In addition to the color, the finish, or lip, of a bottle can be very informative. The finish indicates the type of closure that was used on the bottle, such as a cork, screw top, or “hutch”. Certain finishes were also used for certain products. For example, the crown finish was patented in 1892 and became popular in the early 20th century, and was common on beer and other beverage bottles. The straight brandy, or wine, finish was typically used on large (5th to quart sized) round, square, and rectangular mouth-blown liquor bottles made from 1890-1920, when Prohibition took effect.
The artifacts recovered from Canaan Cemetery date from 1880-1930, suggesting that by the 1930s, the use of these types of grave goods began to decline.