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Hi my name is Bill Lindsey and I am in the process of creating a website for the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The website is entitled the Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website. The draft Homepage is currently located at the following URL: http://webpages.charter.net/blindsey8952/blm/index.htm

If you look at the site, it will become quickly obvious that the Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website is a work in progress and not completed as yet. The website is a "special project" that I've been allowed to pursue as an adjunct to my regular job with the BLM doing rangeland & wild horse management on our Western public lands. Needless to say, bottles are my hobby & passion and I've been collecting since a teenager (37 years of collecting).

The idea for devising a tool for archaeologists (and collectors) to date & otherwise ID old bottles has been in my head for a couple decades. I've been assisting BLM archaeologists for years in the identifying & dating of glass stuff they find during digs & cultural surveys. During this time I have noted that with very few exceptions, archaeologists have only a very limited knowledge of this subject since they are typically into prehistory and aboriginal artifacts. To be fair that is what they are taught in college; bottle and glass dating is probably just a minor component of some historic archaeology class.

There is also no real resource out there that does what is needed - provide a systematic way to ascertain the age and use of a historic bottle. The best that exists is "The Parks Canada Glass Glossary" by Jones & Sullivan (1989) which is quite good, but there is so much more information out there that could help refine the dating & typing of a bottle. Unfortunately, it is scattered around in hundreds of books and thousands of heads. Originally I thought I would attempt to do a book or guide on the subject. Then "they" invented the internet (thank you "they"!) and the vehicle for such a tool like I was thinking of became obvious...a website!

About 2 years ago my bosses, sensing that I was in need of a new challenge (I've been a range/wild horse guy for about 30 years with 3 years to retire), decided to allow me a special project knowing full well that the project would be the bottle website or functional equivalent. I've been working on it since early 2003 using government time, a lot of my personal time, and all my own personal resources (references and bottles). I have personally spent a lot of money on these resources - that is how important this project is to me. I probably have a year or two more to go on it to get it in a state that is more or less "complete" though I plan on revising and working on it forever (as a volunteer after retirement in late 2007). There will be a lot more information on the site once it is complete and beyond...

Unless the fates act against me, I will not allow the site to languish or get out of date like you note on your Homepage about other bottle sites on the internet - which is unfortunately very true. I plan on updating it regularly, making sure the links work, and adding lots more information over time. I also hope that it will be an "inviting" site for the internet public to view and use, though the site will contain a LOT of information which may make it somewhat awkward to view/use without spending some serious time figuring it out. Though it is purely my website to complete, I have several capable co-conspirators from both the cultural (archaeologists) and collector worlds assisting me with quality control, editing, information input, and the like.

Even though the overall site is incomplete many parts of it are already complete and useable. What you can see of it on the internet is what I loaded on my own personal internet server space so that a few reviewers in the collector's and academic world can view it. (All of what is completed is fully loaded on the BLM's intranet, but the public can't see that...yet.) What is loaded on my server space is not everything that is done to date. In particular, virtually none of the small pictures will actually open to the promised larger image since I just don't have enough server space to load all the large, server space sucking pictures. My personal server space must also hold my own personal webpages - which is were people are now starting to find the BLM bottle website since I recently put links to it on my personal pages.

Even though I have the full backing of the BLM on this project (it will be their site) the powers that be have not wanted to have the still partial & incomplete website loaded onto the internet - thus the loading of the main pages on my own "charter.net" server space. I probably shouldn't have it there since it is not complete and will be an official government website in the future. However, I added the links to my pages this past summer to see what happens...and I've been getting more and more interest every week. The site now pops up with regularity on search engines like Google.

Partly because of this, I recently received permission to load the incomplete site on the BLM's internet server! This is a major milestone in the progress of the site and the intent of the BLM to make this happen. It will likely have the following URL: www.blm.gov/historic_bottles. However, it is not there yet and that URL is currently nonexistent. The plan is to have the entire completed portions on the internet sometime by the end of 2004. My thought is that what is completed will still be useful as long as people realize the limitations of the moment, i.e. it's incompleteness, though once on the BLM server all the hyperlinks will work correctly and I can probably add a search function. Currently only the Homepage notes the site's incompleteness. The other pages do not so it is probably confusing to people. The soon-to-be-loaded BLM internet version will note the sites incompleteness on all the pages I think.

In any event, I am interested in what users of the Antique-Bottles.Com website think of the site and any constructive suggestions they may have to make the site better, more understandable, more useable, more whatever. The website is a public paid for and sponsored resource and needs to reflect the needs of the public as well as the archaeological community.

Thanks! Bill Lindsey

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a tool for archaeologists (and collectors) a tool for archaeologists (and collectors)