Craft and Commerce: Identifying Trade networks and Aesthetic Connections Using Local Pipes

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: The Importance and Usefulness of Exploring Old or Forgotten Collections" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Within a half century of contact with the Americas, tobacco became a mainstay of West African life. Regional artisans began producing pipes giving rise to a new craft specialization. Archaeologists have created detailed typologies of these objects noting regional styles for dissertations or small research projects. Many of these collections are packed away in repositories in Africa, North America or Europe with little to no reporting. In an attempt to use these old (and new) collections to shed light on possible regional connections in an African crafting industry, we bring together pipes from the Senegambia and Guinea to assess aesthetic connections and exchange via typological as well as XRF analysis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: The Importance and Usefulness of Exploring Old or Forgotten Collections   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology