PIPE DEPOSITION BEHAVIOR

P.J. Nebergall
Sociology, Anthropology & Geography, UT-Chattanooga

     Since 1988, I have been engaged in archaeological and 
ethnographic research at the site of Howgill, Hallbankgate, 
Cumbria, near Hadrian's Wall between England and Scotland.  A 
multi-component palimpsest, Howgill's uppermost stratum is early 
Industrial Age, a period often termed "Post-Medieval."  

     In excavations of British and American sites of this period, 
clay tobacco pipes, complete or fragmentary, are common finds.  
The pipes are quite fragile, and their presence unremarkable.  I 
had never seriously pondered their spatial patterning as 
artifacts.  The following, which changed all that, was a complete 
surprise to me.

     During the 1989 excavation season, I rented lodgings in the 
nearby village of Lanercost.  One rainy day, I had finds out on a 
table for cataloging and photographs.  My elderly landlady 
entered the room, and looked closely at the fruits of my labor.  
Noticing several fragments of clay tobacco pipes, she remarked 
that her father had smoked the same sort of pipe.  Clay pipes 
grew foul with continued use, she explained, and the traditional 
way to clean them was to bury them in the garden for several 
weeks!   Dig them up again, and the tobacco resins would be gone! 
(I would explain that the soils of Cumbria are rich, moist, 
well-drained, and slightly acid.)

     How many pipes (we always seem to find them in groups and 
bunches) were deposited in the soil not by discard, but as part 
of a cleaning operation?  How often were these resting places 
forgotten, or the pipe damaged in the act of disinterment?  
Deliberate temporary burial of tobacco pipes needs to be added to 
our list of possible explanations for their deposition.