Archaeologists are always pulling up bottles or jars with mystery sludge, and all sorts of curios end up in museum collections (one of my favorites being a 19th century pickle on display at the Oregon Historical Society). While the containers themselves can provide temporal information or clues to what types of products people historically bought or used, they are sometimes repurposed or otherwise not what we expect them to be.
We spoke with University of Idaho archaeology professor Mark Warner and chemistry professor Ray von Wandruszka about archaeochemistry and their recent publication tantalizingly titled, “Urine on the Shelves, Odious Materials in Archaeological Collections.” It describes some of their most noteworthy finds over the decade plus they have been analyzing slimes and slurries—including a bottle of “whisky” on a popular Seattle museum’s shelf that turned out to be… urine. These analyses are not only providing useful information for the archaeologists and curators tasked with preserving and interpreting these objects, but they also provide a cautionary tales about the potential dangers hidden in old bottles.
We also spoke with Oregon OSHA occupational health consultant Averie Foster about her project aimed at identifying workplace hazards related to historical artifacts. She was primarily targeting lead, mercury, and arsenic, and the potential for exposure through touch or airborne contamination when storing or working with collections. To do this, Foster has been traveling around the state like a modern-day ghost buster armed with high tech equipment that measures vapors and particulates instead of ectoplasm or electromagnetic fields. Like Warner and von Wandruszka, Foster’s work is helping folks better understand historical items, and how best to care for them.
While not all antiques are trying to kill you, harmful toxins can make their way into collections in a variety of ways. Mercury (Hg) was used in mirrors, and was also used in felted and feathered hats, as well as a variety of cosmetics. In particular, mercurous chloride, or calomel, was popular with those seeking a “pearly glow.” Arsenic (As) is commonly found in old taxidermy specimens, a staple of many museum collections, and was used in green dyes until the mid-19th century. Lead (Pb) can be found in old paint, ceramic glazes, and bullets, and can flake and become airborne with age. Lead was once intentionally added to cosmetics as a whitening agent, and still can be found in makeup as an unintended contaminant today. While it is easy to shake our heads at the foolishness of the past, safety missteps continue—just look at the microplastics and forever chemicals we have been inundated with over the past decade.
Foster’s work has helped institutions devise safety protocols and better risk assessments for new or existing collections. The bottom line is wear gloves, opt for good ventilation, and stay away from green dresses. After talking with Foster I ran home and put all the fancy feathered and felted hats I had inherited into tightly sealed plastic bags, where they will remain until I can confirm they will not poison me (and, if I am being perfectly honest, they don’t fit my giant modern head anyway).
Over the years we have sent dozens of bottles and miscellaneous containers to von Wandruszka and his students for testing. The students got experience with a variety chemistry techniques, and we received reports of their findings. These reports identified Traditional Chinese Medicines in bottles and vials from the Jacksonville Chinese Quarter, shoe polish, paint, hair dye and shampoo from an early 20th century site in Ashland, and even a jar of peanut butter from the Britt Gardens. We also had several samples that were just dirt or rust. Luckily, in our case, none of them were particularly toxic. While we might have been able to figure out some of these products the old fashioned way (i.e. by clues on the bottles or jars themselves), finding something as mundane as shampoo or peanut butter on an archaeological site does help to humanize and make the people we study more relatable. It can also help us recalibrate the ways in which we think of the past—for it can be exciting to romanticize a long-lost bottle full of whiskey from the Wild West, and sometimes it is actually just pee.
