"bottled in illinois" has proven to be a very resourceful guide to have on hand when digging privy pits

a detailed overview of this incredibly resourceful and gargantuan tome is written below by the authors. since purchasing this book, i have it on hand at every jobsite when the demolition phase has concluded and excavation of the lot begins. that way, i can immediately identify and catalog (on site) the bottles we discover in the privy pits.

"in the pages of this book, we describe and illustrate nearly 1,100 different illinois embossed-bottle varieties produced before, during, and after the civil war for close to 500 illinois merchants operating in over 100 small towns and cities across the state, with populations ranging from just a few hundred souls to more than 100,000 people. several small towns are represented by only a single embossed-bottle style used by one enterprising merchant. at the opposite end of the spectrum, chicago bottler john a. lomax created the “largest bottling house in the u.s.” during the 1860s and 1870s, using over 60 different embossed-bottle styles, in a rich variety of colors, to help sell his beverages. the authors have worked with historical archivists eva mounce and curtis mann to research the bottlers and bottled products included in our book—and 14 additional historical-research contributors have added their local and regional expertise and knowledge to help make the volume a reality.

because of the daunting scale of the effort needed to document embossed and stamped bottle styles, user/maker marks, bottle contents, and product histories, the few existing pioneering published studies of such bottles used by early illinois merchants provide only partial, often regional, thumbnail-outline lists with little associated historical information on the merchants and their products. for example, the most extensive of these studies—which focuses only on embossed illinois soda bottles dating from 1840 to the 1940s—lists just six embossed sodas dating to the 1840–1860 period (only three of which were recognized by the authors as dating to pre–civil war times). our current study documents, illustrates, and provides historical-context studies of 87 embossed soda/mineral water bottles of this age, used by bottlers in 46 illinois towns ranging from chicago to cairo. for the 1860–1880 period, previous publications document only 43 blob-top soda styles statewide. our current study provides comprehensive historical and stylistic information on 247 such bottles. previous volumes list just 17 stamped stoneware bottles from illinois, several of which were not identified as the product of illinois bottlers at the time his publications appeared. our current study provides historical and stylistic information on 37 such bottle

because of the scale and scope of the present volume and the limited utility of previously published sources, our focus has been to provide detailed information on bottle styles and their embossed lettering and bottle contents, in addition to the histories of illinois bottlers who used these particular types of glass and stoneware containers. the product manufacture and use information provided within these pages, combined with information from the archaeological sites where complete and fragmentary examples of the bottles were discarded, will no doubt be of use for overview studies of consumer behavior and patterns of product movement. but our immediate study focus has been to provide archaeologists and historians from illinois and surrounding areas with clear and comprehensive information on 1840–1880 bottle styles, product contents, product functions (both real and imagined), and merchant histories, to aid in reconstructing the age of archaeological site occupations and in interpreting site functions and occupant activities."