Witch Bottles: Their Contents, Contexts and Uses

Abstract

Witch-bottles are unusual in the context of apotropaic (evil-averting) objects in that they were written about in pamphlets and books during the seventeenth century and later. Before launching into an examination of them, some points about the general difficulties involved in this topic should be made. Witch-bottles, like other apotropaic objects, were intentionally concealed so it is only when buildings are demolished, repaired, or when archaeologists excavate building sites that they come to light. In the case of demolitions and repairs the likely finders are the builders who quite often dispose of these objects because they don’t know what they are. Sometimes the opposite is true and the witch-bottles are destroyed for superstitious reasons. This means that only very few get reported to the Apotropaios project (www.apotropaios.co.uk) or to a local museum or archaeology unit. The number of witch-bottles found is also limited by how many buildings survive from any given period. Thus, the number of examples dealt with in this paper are likely to be only a tiny portion of the total number which were concealed.