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Posted on 02/04/2020 8:32:46 PM PST by nickcarraway
To history experts, the scenario goes something like this: A Union officer stationed on enemy Southern soil drops a handful of iron nails into a bottle, adds some personal effects — clippings of his hair or fingernails, maybe some urine — corks it up and buries it near his hearth.
He likely offers up a fervent prayer that he’ll survive the Civil War and return home to Pennsylvania. And the bottle of nails was his good luck charm.
A century and a half later, in 2016, archaeologists excavating the remains of a Civil War outpost on a broad highway median in York County before widening work unearthed that bottle. The lip was broken off, the nest of nails badly rusted.
The artifact was cleaned up and cataloged as a sort of makeshift storage container. Then, six months ago, experts in ceramics and folk ritual recognized it for what it is: a witch bottle — part of a tradition of folk magic that stretches back to the Middle Ages.
“I’m 110% sure,” said Robert Hunter, an archaeologist and, for the past 20 years, editor of the history journal “Ceramics in America.” “I have a big interest in the rituals of folk magic. And it’s not so much the bottle with the nails in it — it was the context in which it was found. It appears to have been buried associated with a brick hearth, which is the hallmark of how these charms were used.”
Hunter is founder of the William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research (WMCAR), which undertook the dig for the Virginia Department of Transportation. He left the college in 1993, but last year was flagged by WMCAR staff member Oliver Mueller-Heubach, who was part of the dig and first suspected the bottle’s provenance.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
Ping
old news
Do they have any idea of who left the bottle and whether they survived?
That’s what I was thinking.
Survived? Not if he ate pickles. Every civil war soldier that ate pickles is dead today.
Has the witch Pelosi asked for her bottle back yet?
Hillarious!
They said “witch bottle” not “bitch bottle.”
And if y’all think that thing is an old folk tale, go to youtube, type search witch bottle, and you will see it is something real.
Not much different from the many other charms and talismans people carry with them to this day.
Nancy Pelosi.
A witch bottle? When they opened it, did pelosi fly out?
New to me.
Crystals!
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