Pipe Stems Found at Fort St. Joseph

Hi everyone,

In the past several months, I have found that colonial America has many exciting aspects. Did you know that smoking pipes came in all kinds of styles and materials? Many of the pipes found at Fort St. Joseph are made from kaolin clay. Kaolin clay is one of the most common minerals in the world, but it was unknown to Europeans as a material to be used until the early 18th century when reports from China labeled kaolin as the base material for making Jingdezhen porcelain (named after the village in which it was created). The area around the village was called Gaoling which the basis for the word kaolin.

For many years kaolin pipes came from England and the Netherlands. Many of the pipes from St. Joseph most likely come from these two places. These clay pipes were very fragile and broke often. Some research suggests that a clay pipe could last less than 2 weeks! Some clay pipes have very detailed carvings for something so ephemeral. There are many things that go into a serviceable clay pipe. The pipes from England and Scandinavia were more prized because they lacked the inclusions found in the French pipes. French pipes were more likely to break and could burn unevenly. Eventually, the French were able to create a competitive pipe, (but that is outside of the fort's time period.) The pipe trade was so diverse that pipe makers started putting maker’s marks on pipes which can be used to trace the journey of the pipe! 

Several pipes in the collection bear the maker’s mark: TD, which could be the mark of Thomas Dormer, a well-known pipe maker in England. The TD maker’s mark has been found across colonial North America from Montreal down to Florida. This is interesting because it shows that these pipes were widespread, and it gives us insight into interactions between different countries and the reach of pipe smoking. It is amazing that such a simple item could provide us with so much information. 

The pipes found at Fort St. Joseph can be dated using a bore stem measurement system called the Harrington-Binford principle. This system uses bore width of the pipe stem to identify when the pipes were crafted. This is important to the project because it will help corroborate established timelines. Further research could be done to determine where the clay comes from, providing valuable information about trade routes and personal preferences. Pipes also evolved over time. Initially, pipe stem diameters were much larger, and as time went by, the bore sizes shrank. 

The pipe was found this season in the unit N3, W8. This bowl is a great example of a pipe “foot”. This was used when a smoker wanted to set the pipe down for whatever reason. The foot allowed the pipe to sit in such a way that the pipe would not tip over, possibly spilling the burning ember inside. This seems like a simple and obvious addition but for many years pipes had no foot. 

The kaolin pipe may have been a fragile item, but it was widely used and were made in many ways from the simple pipe found at the site this season, to extravagant pipes with different designs. Tobacco served an important role not just in North America, but in the rest of the world. We can see that impact here at Fort St. Joseph. These exciting artifacts give us just a brief glimpse into the past of not just the individual, but of the global trade network and the importance of tobacco. This is just the tip of the iceberg as we continue to expand our knowledge of the site, we hope to answer many questions about Fort St. Joseph and its place in New France. Pipe stem research is just one method we are using to try to do that. 

John Simmons

References:

Mallios, S. (2005). Back to the Bowl: Using English Tobacco Pipebowls to Calculate Mean Site-Occupation Dates. Historical Archaeology, 39(2), 89–104. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25617249

Reid, C. S. "Paddy" (1976) "Clay Pipes in the Upper Great Lakes: The Ermatinger Assemblage," Northeast Historical Archaeology: Vol. 5 5, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.22191/neha/vol5/iss1/1

IMA Europe https://ima-europe.eu/about-industrial-minerals/kaolin/