Wine Bottle Seal

Artifact of the Month: September 2015

Fragment of an 18th-century wine bottle seal from EU 2N.

Photographer: Richard Veit; Date: April 9, 2012.

This fragment of an 18th-century wine bottle seal was recovered from EU 2N during Monmouth University’s 2011 Field School at White Hill Mansion in Fieldsboro, NJ.  The seal is marked with the partial date, either 54 or 64, presumably 1754 or 1764, which coincided with Robert Field, Sr.’s ownership and occupation of the site. Seals of this nature are normally associated with individuals of wealth(White and Beaudry 2009:216) and were symbols of identity, particularly male identity (Veit and Huey 2014).

Veit, Richard and Paul R. Huey
2014       “New Bottles Made with My Crest”: Colonial Bottle Seals from Eastern North America, a Gazetteer and Interpretation.  Northeast Historical Archaeology 43:54-91. 

White, C. L. and M.C. Beaudry 
2009    Artifacts and Personal Identity.  In International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, ed. by Teresita Majewski and David Gaimster, pp. 209-219, Springer, New York.


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