Unpleasant and fascinating surprise found in a bottle with 200 years

The mystery of a 200 -year -old bottle was resolved. It was not a bottle of drinks, but a “witch bottle” full of urine and a series of plants to ward off malevolent spirits.

The bottle, still intact with the original and liquid corkhe was unearthed at a construction shipyard in the Cleethoorpes coastal city in Lincolnshire, the United Kingdom.

According to the owner of the property handed it to the Department of Conservation of Cultural Heritage of the University of Lincoln with two requests: preserve the object and identify the liquid contained in the bottle without removing the cork.

“I received the e-mail with the request for information about the bottle about a year ago And I made a point of accepting it as a student project. We received numerous requests for information about very varied objects, but we had never accepted something like this, ”he said Josephine McKenzieSuperior technique of the Department of Conservation of Cultural Heritage ”.

“It’s really a fascinating and rare object“McKenzie added.

The task was assumed by Zara Yeatesa third year of undergraduate year, who was immediately attracted to the strange artifact.

As witch bottles are part of a popular tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries It consists of placing glass bottles at home like talismans to ward off the evil spirits.

They are more common in the UK, although tradition has crossed the Atlantic and also reached the United States.

In this part of, the bottles often contain objects like small bones of animals, iron nails, nail trees and other materials linked to superstition and belief in sympathetic magic.

To determine if the bottle contained any of these symbolic materials, which would suggest that it was a real bottle of witch, Yeats made a Relic Radiography. To its surprise, the bottle contained no large solid objects – especially liquid with small amounts of sediment.

This led Yeates and his team to speculate if the object would be in accordance with a similar tradition in East Angliaa neighboring region of Lincolnshire, where the witch bottles were filled with urine and plantssuch as leaves, herbs or flowers.

The use of XRF Analysis (X -ray Flurrescence) and multispectral images allowed to confirm these suspicions: the bottle contained body fluid and small amounts of degraded plant material.

The most likely explanation is that the bottle was a Witch bottle inspired by the traditions of neighboring East Anglia.

Alternatively, it may reflect a Different common practice among sailorsin which a bottle full of urine was buried at home as a superstitious measure for guarantee a safe return of your travels.

Yeats said the builders who found the bottle They thought it contained rum and were planning to drink it – Therefore, regardless of the original function of the bottle, It is good that they have not done it.

According to the BBC, this particular bottle form was introduced in 1790 and its irregularity indicates that it was blown by hand. Since the molds for manufacturing bottles were only introduced in 1840, this implies that the bottle was manufactured during this 50 -year period in the early nineteenth century.

O Mystery of the bottle is resolved, But your adventure continues. After being conserved by Yeats, the artifact will be exposed at the End of Conservation Course of the Cultural Heritage of the University of Lincoin, in June 2025, before being returned to its owner.