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| Curator’s Choice Curator’s Choice is a monthly series that highlights a significant or unusual artifact chosen from the MAC Lab collections by our staff. We are archiving previous selections so that you can see what is “behind-the-scenes” at the MAC Lab. We hope you enjoy learning about this month’s distinctive artifact, and we welcome any additional insight you can provide us about the objects. Come back and discover what piece of the past we have to share with you next month |
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May 2008 Triangular
Bit Smoking Pipe
By:Edward Chaney, Deputy Director |
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The
pipe is 5.69 cm (2.24 in.) long, although much of the bowl is missing.
The bit (mouth end) is 2.3 cm (0.9 in.) wide and 0.66 cm (0.26 in.)
high at its thickest point, and has a round bore that is approximately
0.4 cm (0.16 in.) in diameter. This bore hole was probably made
with a small stick or reed. The bit was carefully crafted and flared,
and appears as an elongated diamond in cross section. Although the
bowl is largely missing, similar pipes generally have bowls that
extend at an obtuse angle to The pipe is made of untempered red clay, is burnished, and is decorated with a series of dentate-impressed geometric designs at the bowl end. These designs, consisting of at least two-and-a-half diamonds, occur on both the top and bottom surfaces of the pipestem. The diamond patterns are carefully positioned along the centerlines of the pipe, and wrap around the stem, where they meet the ends of the diamond decorations from the opposite side. This type of decoration was in use by at least the thirteenth century AD in Virginia (Potter 1993:226).
All images courtesy Naval District Washington, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, unless otherwise noted.
Potter,
Stephen R. Schmitt,
Karl Jr. Sperling,
Christopher Stephenson,
Robert L. and Alice L. L. Ferguson Stewart,
T. Dale |
To view previous months' archives - click here
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