Stockton,
CA 
Bottles
We found
many bottles that contained foods, medicines, or alcohol drinks used by
the Chinese laundry workers.
Some of the bottles contained either Chinese or Euroamerican wines or liquors. The workers at the laundry may have used them for cooking, or for relaxing with friends after work.
Many of the bottles found at the laundry
originally contained medicines called
bitters that helped with kidney or liver problems. Once the medicine was
taken, the workers reused the bottles to store bluing dye. This was a type
of dye that was often added to washing to make clothes look whiter and
cleaner.
Chinese factories in the U.S. used glass bottles to ship their products
to Chinese communities throughout the country. At the laundry we found a
bottle with 
Chinese
writing on its label, which once contained ginger beer made in San
Francisco.
How many foods or products do you use that comes in bottles? Do you recycle these bottles or throw them away?
How might recycling your bottles affect what future
archaeologists could tell about you from your trash?
Discover more artifactsor
Compare
your ideas to the archaeologists' ideas