The Research Potential of DNA from Tobacco Pipes

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology and Analysis of the Belvoir Quarter" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Often, archaeologists are challenged by assigning cultural affiliations to their sites. Recently, four tobacco pipe stems were collected from a Maryland slave quarter and sent to a DNA lab. The analysis revealed the ancestry and sex of one of the tobacco pipe smokers, thereby providing archaeoloigsts a scientific link to a specific area of Africa. Indeed, this DNA application possesses signficant potential for determining who may have occupied certain sites. In addition, wide spread use of this technique by the archaeological community on a regional level could create enough data to address immigration and movement of certain ancestral groups across the landscape and over time. This paper will discuss such research potential, and also provide archaeologists direciton on the types of artifacts most likely to yield fascinating results.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology and Analysis of the Belvoir Quarter   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 142