Abstract
This study examines locally manufactured tobacco pipes commonly found on 17th-century Chesapeake sites. Analysis of these artifacts has traditionally been dominated by questions regarding the ethnicity of their makers, often based on qualitative assessments of stylistic similarity between the pipes and the material culture of indigenous American or West African peoples. The authors maintain that quantitative approaches to studying tobacco pipes can serve to answer queries of who made, distributed, and smoked these items and where they were manufactured. Particularly, the authors explore whether Colono pipes were manufactured and distributed within the Virginia Colony. Stylistic evidence supports the idea that 17th-century Jamestown acted as a center of production and/or distribution for this tobacco pipe industry in the James River Valley. Additionally, bore diameter measurements reveal that certain standardized English tools were used to manufacture a majority of Colono pipes. The authors conclude that it is highly likely that these pipes were manufactured and distributed within a colonial market system. These insights also led to the creation and preliminary evaluation of a mean dating formula based on a temporal linear regression of the pipe data from excavations at Jamestown Island and its hinterland.
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Monroe, J.C., Mallios, S. A Seventeenth-Century Colonial Cottage Industry: New Evidence and a Dating Formula for Colono Tobacco Pipes in the Chesapeake. Hist Arch 38, 68–82 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376643
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03376643