bottle

The bottle was found by chance by a person digging in the yard of his home at Alton, Hampshire, in southern England. Several iron objects, including two spearheads and two knives, were found at the same time. In addition to the glass bottle, the Corning Museum acquired the iron objects in order to ensure that the finds are preserved together. Alton is the site of a partly excavated Anglo-Saxon cemetery, and it seems clear that the bottle and other objects came from one or more graves associated with the cemetery. Vessels of this type have Roman antecedents. They have a wide distribution in Germany, the Low Countries, and northern France, but not in the British Isles. Consequently, while we feel sure that the bottle from Alton was imported from the Continent, we have no precise idea about where it was made. Apart from beads, little glass was produced in England between the fifth and seventh centuries, and most of the glass vessels found in England were imported from the Continent. The removal of antiquities from the United Kingdom is strictly controlled, and the bottle and the iron objects were granted an export license to leave the country. The occurrence of glass bottles in early Anglo-Saxon England is described in Vera I. Evison, “Glass Vessels in England AD 400–1100,” in Glass in Britain and Ireland, AD 350–1100, ed. Jennifer Price, Occasional Paper No. 127, London: The British Museum, 2000, pp. 47–104, especially pp. 65–66.