Obviously, this is not a hard and fast rule as people still smoked them (see one of the pipes below, for example) – and indeed you can still buy clay pipes – but it is a useful rule of thumb. Interestingly, we also have a terminus ante quem (archaeology speak for the latest date something could have happened) – the cigarette became very popular late in the reign of Victoria, gradually replacing the pipe, and it is generally taken that the use of clay pipes died out after about 1900.
This provides us a nice terminus post quem (archaeology speak for the earliest possible date something could have happened) for clay pipes. This is no place for a general history of tobacco smoking, but it is worth mentioning that it was only 1580-ish that the first ships came back from the New World with the dried leaves as cargo. I have previously posted a few good pipe fragments ( here for example), but I have others…
And yet as an object they were disposable I have referred to them as the cigarette butt of the Victorian period, as often they were bought pre-filled with tobacco, smoked, and then thrown away. I may have mentioned previously that I absolutely love clay pipes – there is just something so tactile and personal about them. In case you hadn’t worked it out by the title, today’s blog post is all about pipes. Text prepared by Mary French, winter 2006.What ho! wonderful people. The Hamiltons’ personal Pamplin pipe type collection, which includes examples of most of these forms and is now housed by the Museum of Anthropology, is presented in its entirety in this online exhibit. The Hamiltons examined 4,451 pipes from the Pamplin area (recovered from the Pamplin Company’s factory grounds and from the site of a local store that sold home-industry pipes) and identified 39 styles that represented the majority of pipe forms produced in the Pamplin area from the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries. In 1972, Missouri avocational archaeologists Henry and Jean Hamilton published an article about Pamplin pipes that remains the definitive source on the subject. The Akron Smoking Pipe Company of Ohio also owned a plant in Pamplin from 1890 to 1920, and produced Pamplin-type pipes during that time period. Manufactured by individual pipemakers beginning in about 1740, and by the Pamplin Smoking Pipe and Manufacturing Company, which operated from 1878 until 1951, pipes from the Pamplin area are distinguished by the high-quality, deep red, local clay from which they were made. The area of Pamplin, Virginia, is one the localities where this type is known to have been produced in large quantities. A common type produced in the eastern United States in the 18th and 19th centuries has a comparatively large bowl with a short stem into which a longer stem (usually of reed) was inserted. A number of different kinds of clay pipes were also produced locally. Thus, clay pipes can serve as a valuable tool in helping to date a historic archaeological site.Ĭlay pipes imported from England typically have a small bowl and long stem and are made of kaolin (a fine, white clay) this type of pipe is common to Colonial-period archaeological sites. These inexpensive and disposable items were generally manufactured, used, and thrown away within a very short span of time, and individual styles can often be traced to specific manufacturer and period of production. Clay tobacco pipes are a common artifact type found in historic Euro-American archaeological sites.
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