Nikki
Nikki Karapanos
Welcome to my blog! I am a current Anthropology student at Cosumnes River College and will be transferring to UC Davis in the fall of 2018. I have been working with CRAWL since the fall of 2017 and hope to continue working in archaeological labs throughout the duration of my time as an undergraduate student. My interests include traveling, hiking, and buying candles.
Deep Finds
Most of the wine bottles we have analyzed in our collection have punts, but not all of them have over 4.5 centimeter deep punts. These punts trigger curiosity; what are they for? Do deeper punts serve different purposes? Interestingly enough, punts enhance the bottle and its contents in several ways. When making bottles, glass blowers would push the seam up on the bottom of the bottle so that the it would stand upright and not have a sharp point on the bottom. In other cases, punts are necessary for the stability and structural integrity of pressured bottles that contain sparkling wine. We can thank punts for chilling wine quickly and collecting the sediment that settles in the tight area near the base. Deeper punts don’t mean better wine, but the feature enhances the contents and the functionality of the bottle.
The Glass from the Past
The organization trek continues as this artifact class, glass, is close to being packed away. Many glass artifacts were placed in numeric order, which qualified for the presence of more trays! The next step of the process involves putting them (carefully) into bankers boxes, which we will be getting to the next time in lab. A majority of our glass artifacts included hair product bottles, champagne, wine, bourbon and beer bottles. Some of the glass pieces in our collection have embossing on them, some easily recognizable and others not. Previously, when these artifacts were being analyzed, we used books on glass embossing to gather information and data to form an idea of where some of these bottles were imported from. At a time of high immigration to Central California, it is important to recognize where this glass from the past originated from.
Organizer’s Heaven
An important aspect of maintaining efficiency and consistency within our project is to keep everything organized. Working with glass artifacts can be a tedious task, being that they’re so fragile. After cataloguing, labeling, and double checking each individual artifact, it has come time to do my favorite task: organizing them by numeric order from least to greatest. Yes, it sounds incredibly easy, but our collection involves artifact numbers as well as lot numbers that add to the fun. This means that we have artifacts with added decimal numbers. For example, in our collection, our artifacts are labeled as follows: CRC-Year- Semester Number- Artifact Number- Optional Lot Number. It’s the satisfaction of knowing that all bags are in order, as they should be, that makes this aspect of the project so entertaining. This process makes the artifacts easily accessible when they are packed away in the boxes. Being in lab has allowed me to develop into an organizing guru, and this tray was no match to my organization skills.