And what about French Clay Pipes?

Summary

Historical literature and archaeological evidence both indicate that clay pipes were produced in France before 1760, namely in various towns of Northern France, but such pipe collections have yet to be systematically analyzed. This situation makes it difficult to identify them ‘ if any ‘ in archaeological collections found in North America. Neutron activation analysis was therefore performed on a few clay pipe fragments found in Trois-Rivières, a New France site dating before 1770, to compare their chemical signature with datasets for British and Dutch manufactured pipes dating from 1650 to 1760. The results suggested that some of the clay pipes from Trois-Rivières, although having been preliminarily classified as British and Dutch, exhibited a slightly different chemical signature; could they be French products? This hypothesis brought forth questions regarding trade routes, as well as the need to develop an approach to identify potential French pipes in artefact collections from New France.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Clay Tobacco Pipe Studies: Where Will the 21st century Bring Us?

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-39,06