Download pdf version - 42.3 MB - Research Laboratories of ...

Kitchen GroupCeramics. As shown in Table 1, the Kitchen ceramic group included beveragecontainers, specifically stoneware ale bottles, and a variety of food storage and baking dishes,such as stoneware crocks and jugs, or yellow ware and whiteware baking dishes.Stoneware sherds make up 10.6% of all ceramics from the site (Table 3). Stonewarevessels in the Kitchen group include imported ceramic ale bottles. At least 11 bottles arerepresented and include: one with English buff body, opaque white glaze and brown slip; onewith European gray body with salt glaze and brown slip; and nine English buff-bodied bottleswith an unglazed base and yellow slip on the top of the bottle. Almost all ceramic bottles inthe nineteenth century came from England. Before the automation of glass bottle making in1903, ceramic bottles were cheaper, and they had the advantages of keeping beverages coolerand being easier to transport because of the sturdiness and thickness of the stoneware(Munsey 1970:134). This was the advantage of stoneware storage containers in generalduring the nineteenth century—that they kept foods cooler, and thus preserved them longer.Ale was a fairly inexpensive beverage (Polak 1997:65), and, unlike unpasteurized beer (pre-1873), it had a longer shelf life and could be transported (Switzer 1974:9). Ale bottles fromthe early nineteenth century were often gray and sometimes unglazed (Polak 1997:65;Munsey 1970:135). Late nineteenth-century ale bottles were usually brown and white, andthose from around the turn of the century have an almost glass-like finish. Ginger beerbottles look very similar to ale bottles but were usually smaller (holding only about 10ounces) (Munsey 1970:145). The majority of bottles recovered from Lot 11 are similar inform, size, surface decoration and color to the ale bottles recovered from the steamerBertrand which sunk in the 1860s (Figure 37). Some of the bottles from the Bertrandassemblage are described as “little or no glaze on the bases. The lower bodies are creamcolored,while the shoulders and necks are pale to dark yellow ochre” (Switzer 1974:9),which would be an apt description of the Lot 11 finds.This date fits in well with what is recorded about the history of alcohol consumptionin Chapel Hill. Battle (1907:575, 608) mentions that in the days before the Civil War (c.1845) people drank either hard liquor or wine because malt liquors were not available at thattime. For most of the nineteenth century, and up until the end of Prohibition in the twentiethcentury, alcohol consumption was prohibited to students, and it was illegal for anyone to sellalcohol in the town. Starting in 1827, the sale of hard liquor was prohibited in the townproper. In 1855 wine and malt liquors were added to the ban, and sales were prohibitedwithin two miles of the town (Battle 1907:645–646). Even so, in 1868, after the Civil War,the dismayed Cornelia Spencer wrote that “no fewer than six places have been latelyestablished where liquor is openly sold” (Battle 1907:30). After the University reopened in1875, the ban on alcohol was reinstated and extended to within four miles of the town (Battle1907:343). The ban stayed in effect until well after the end of the Phi Delta Theta fraternityhouse era. While the ban was no doubt ignored by many who partook of alcoholsurreptitiously (Battle [1907:646] says that “while intoxicating liquors could not be openlybought, there were abundant underground streams which could be and were easily tapped bythose who had money and inclination”), the years of the Civil War and its aftermath—1860s33