A Review of the Archaeological Evidence for Smoking across the Americas and Africa

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

At present, smoking is considered one of the largest threats to public health globally. Nonetheless, the inhalation of psychoactive substances after deliberate combustion has deep historical roots. Moreover, current models hold that smoking was invented independently in the Americas and Africa. This paper reviews the archaeological evidence available for both continents. We will examine precontact smoking practices in terms of their antiquity, the delivery devices, and smokestuffs, as well as their social settings. This will be followed by a brief reflection on the changes that occurred when the Columbian exchange network caused smoking to be disseminated far and wide. Lastly, we will draw on recent ancient metabolomics work to exemplify the potential that lies within archaeology to contribute new data to a field of study of utmost importance for the well-being of humanity at large.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37066.0