Artifact ID: Refugee’s water bottle

In the spirit of Christmas and the Nativity (even though Jesus of Nazareth was most definitely Not born at midwinter), I wanted to publish something with a Mary and Joseph, poor-folk-on-the-road theme.
On a recent rewatch of Episode II (focusing on scenes with background commoners), I noticed something in the scene on the refugee transport. I’m surprised I never noticed it before, considering it’s so shiny and eye-catching…

Yes, as Obi-Wan says, “Your eyes can deceive you” and that we shouldn’t trust them. However, in this case, seeing is believing, because that is quite clearly an unmodified, off-the-shelf, stainless steel water bottle sitting on the table between Padme and Anakin.

At first, a small part of me wondered if it was even meant to be there. Maybe it was supposed to be out of frame? Maybe Hayden Christensen was just thirsty, took a swig, set down the bottle, Lucas shouted “Action!” and shot the scene anyway? George is known (especially in the case of the Prequels) for going with the first take, and nobody noticed until the scene was already wrapped and in the proverbial can? (Episode II being the first filmless film, shot entirely on digital).

And then I rolled the scene back, and saw that there is a SECOND, identical bottle in the same scene:

Now I have to wonder if Anakin and Padme made a stop at ‘Fugees-R-Us before their trip?

Since we have more than a single, solitary artifact (eat your heart out, 18^th century longhunter reenactors!), this makes our job much, much easier. In fact, the more I think about it, as a GFFA material-culture scholar, this water bottle is actually a boon, since it easily fulfills several of our ideals for functional items:

a) it’s easily and cheaply obtainable here on Earth…thrift stores are lousy with the things.
b) it requires no cosmetic modifications or gluing on of greeblies to ‘Star Wars-ify’ (although a different stopper would help immensely), and will function exactly as intended as-is, without any mental gymnastics or pretending.
c) based on known context, it’s already associated with common folk!
What more could you want?

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