Thursday - November 11, 2010

By Their Coffee You Shall Know Them: Thursday A&R, part 1

I know there’s an easy pun in here about archaeologists sifting through grounds, so feel free to make one.

See? I can’t resist the urge either. It’s just too easy with this story.

The year is 1905. You are a prospector in Alaska relaxing in your cabin after a chilly day of working the tailings pile. Craving a cup of joe, you pull a tin of coffee off the shelf. Though you can’t imagine it, that distinctive red can, the one you will later use for your precious supply of nails, will long outlive you. And it will give an archaeologist a good idea of when you made your Alaska home.

The coffee was Hills Bros. The can was vacuum-sealed. For more than a decade, no other coffee company mastered this technique that was first used with butter. This made Hills Bros. of San Francisco the primary choice of early Gold Rush cabin dwellers. The pungent beverage was so popular in Alaska it inspired a local archaeologist to produce a field guide, the “Hills Bros. Coffee Can Chronology.”

Steve Lanford of the Bureau of Land Management in Fairbanks finds Hills Bros. cans valuable because he finds the sturdy cans at old cabin sites all over interior Alaska. Lanford knows that designers at the company changed the label often enough that the cans are a diagnostic tool helpful when estimating when someone lived at a site.

“They didn’t leave their diary on the table,” Lanford said of the gold and adventure seekers who built cabins all over Alaska. “But these coffee cans show up often enough in their dumps to give us good information.”

Lanford has rooted through the trash heaps of old cabin sites and older prehistoric sites throughout the Interior for the past dozen years. He teamed with BLM’s Robin Mills to produce the field guide to Hills Bros. cans. His goal was to create a tool for archaeologists.

So an old prospector goes into a saloon in the Yukon. He walks halfway across the room towards the bartender but suddenly finds himself glued in place.
“Hey, why are my boots stuck to the floor ... by chocolate?” he demands.
“Well”, says the bartender, “this is a Klondike Bar.”

To make his palm-size field guide, which covers Hills Bros. cans from 1900 to 1963, Lanford used a history book of Hills Bros. Coffee and real cans from a few archaeological collections. He filled in gaps by acquiring some tins from eBay.

In producing the field guide, Lanford took advantage of Hills Bros. designers’ frequent changes. For example, the Arab on the label has a visible left foot during the years 1932 to 1963, but the “C” in Coffee hides his left foot from 1906 to 1932. Different years feature varying curves of the “r” in Hills Bros. and different text in the instructions for making the coffee.

Archaeologists who study the Gold Rush period can often tell a cabin’s heyday from a quick glance at the dump site. Lanford, for example, can tell you the years Log Cabin syrup came in a can shaped like a log cabin. And what about old bottles, which endure even longer than cans? Don’t even get him started.

“I can spend a number of hours talking about bottles,” Lanford said.

Be sure to invite Mr. Lanford to your next party.

Ok, that’s the modern archaeology bit. Let’s see what Peiper can turn up in the way of redheads. Or better archaeology, which will thus force me to go a red huntin’ myself, to create a 2fer.

Ha .. my esteemed and much valued friend turns out to be a slave driver.  OK Drew ... This just has to go here.

At the end of the day, the rugged men of the Yukon mining camp fill the old saloon with the usual noise and smoke and chatter.
Soon the swinging doors open inward to reveal a familiar figure.  All is suddenly still, even the smoke from the many cigars and hand rolled cigarettes seem to hang motionless in the air, and all you will hear is the jingle-jangle of his spurs as he casually approaches the bar, looking neither right or left such is his confidence.
The bartender speaks first.

What’ll be Wild Bill?

WB … Oh … A Brandy Alexander please.

(with credit to the creators of the fictitious Frederick Kolb ancient recording collection)

Posted by Drew458     on 11/11/2010 at 12:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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