Devil in the Details: Social Drugs Among the Workers at Catoctin Furnace

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Recent excavations at two worker houses at Catoctin Furnace in Western Maryland generated many tobacco and alcohol related artifacts. The disparity in assemblages between the two houses appears to reflect economic and social class distinctions within the industrial village, even among workers in general. One tobacco pipe of particular significance, shaped like a devil’s head, identifies important connections to German territories from which many of the workers had originated. This paper demonstrates that tobacco use and alcohol consumption among iron furnace workers distinguished individual families while also integrating them into the broader worker community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Come, Tell Us How You Lived: 50 Years of Research at Catoctin Furnace, Maryland   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow