205. Cataloging finds

It might seem as though bottle diving is just another form of recreational scuba, like wreck diving. This illusion is soon dispelled once the bottles start mounting up. The bottles represent a collection, and like it or not, this implies that the bottle diver is also a kind of collector. This in turn implies that some duty of care is owed to the collection itself.

The most important thing is to record the provenance of each item within the collection. I have found that the most convenient way to do this is to photograph the finds with a digital camera once they have been cleaned. It is acceptable to photograph several bottles in one go if that makes life simpler. I use an index of site references to determine the actual 10 or 20 metre search area in which each item was found. I then correlate the image to a text file containing each bottle's site reference, the year of its discovery, and as much information about it as is known.

For example, if I have a photograph called “bottles17.gif” that pictures three bottles from various sites, it might have the following information correlated in the text file “bottles17.txt”:

Left, D7. F5-A, 2006, Blenkinsop's Patent Cow Mixture (1920's?)

Center, D7. F5-B, 2006, Thorpe's Brewery (beer) 1920's – 1940's

Right, B9. C2, 2006, Hilbert jar (1890's?)