Natasha Powers, Senior Manager

We recently finished work on a site to the south of Lincoln. There were no Roman buildings or prehistoric flint scatters but a group (or assemblage) of objects was collected and brought back to the offices. Collections of material like this look familiar to us and they can show the processes we go through to interpret a site no matter its age, and the difficulties we face in doing so.

What was it for? A bottle is probably used for storing liquids, we know that because we have seen objects a similar shape and that’s what they were being used for (their function). Shape (or form) is one of the key ways in which we interpret objects. We have a helping hand here as many of the objects still have writing on them, so we can find out exactly what they were used for. We can use the characteristics of those objects to help us work out what the ones without labels might be. The base of no. 12 tells us that it was made to store Hartley’s jams or preserves. We can therefore work out that no. 11, which is not marked but looks very similar, was used for the same function but presumably by different a company. We work out what the objects are by comparing them with other, sometimes more complete, objects which have the same shape or characteristics.

Modern ‘rubbish’ but what can it tell us?

How old is it? Creating a typology (the classification of objects according to their characteristics) can also be key to establishing their date. Shapes and styles may change over time and if you have an object that you can give a secure date to, you can build up a pattern. Here, we can look at the ketchup bottle (no. 5) and see that it looks like those that were produced between 1914 and 1930. Research can help us work out how old other objects may be: Wiltshaw & Robinson (makers of Carlton Ware) produced over 1000 different shapes of Heraldic Souvenir China 1903–1926, including our yacht (no. 13). Bray & Co. Bus Company, changed their name to Lincolnshire Road Car in May 1930, so the ticket stub (no. 26) must be earlier than this. In fact the objects all seem to have been made before 1930, but not earlier than the start of the 20th century.

Typology of ketchup

When was it deposited? Production date doesn’t tell us when these objects were buried. Some objects stay in circulation longer than others because they have uses beyond their original purpose, because we find them aesthetically pleasing or because they become heirlooms. Stoneware jam pots were superseded by glass jam jars, but we have both here. Empty stoneware jars make excellent pencil pots or vases, so perhaps they were reused before being thrown away (I keep match boxes in one at home)?

What does it mean? Take away our knowledge of these objects from their history and how would we interpret them as a group? Why would someone have a small model house and a boat? Is there a religious significance to these items? Why do they have a coat of arms on them? Did the person who they belonged to own land in, or have family in Southport and Bedford? Perhaps they were just pretty objects picked up at a jumble sale? There is a glass pot marked ‘Spear’s Games’ – does that mean there are children involved in the creation of this rubbish? There is a pocket watch of a type that you would expect to belong to a man, but we need to be careful when we ‘engender’ objects: I own a watch much like that myself. Likewise, there is a pot of solid perfume that we might assume is a ‘female’ object. Did they smoke or need a stick to walk with? There are a lot of ink bottles, one of which even has a pen-nib still in it – is this rubbish from a school or an office? Is it from the home of a writer? All in all, there are storage containers, decorative items and practical ones (like the syrup of figs from a brand known as “the family laxative”!). Perhaps, sometime after 1930 someone had a clear-out and got rid of Aunt Agatha’s now unfashionable nick-nacks?

The truth is that we can’t ever know for certain. We can say that the objects were thrown away because they were no longer considered useful. The key to making our interpretation the best that it can be is to gather as much information together as is possible, compare our site with others and set the discovery in context…and that applies to a Roman farmstead as much as a 20th century rubbish dump.

(*with apologies to Tony Robinson and Mick Aston for borrowing the title of their book)