This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In the 18th century, a clay tobacco pipe could reveal more than you might think. Its length, quality and condition, as well as the way it was used, could signal social status.
In a new doctoral thesis, Lund University archaeologist Robert Bergman Carter shows how smokeways at the time served as clear markers of status. "During certain periods, smoking a well-used pipe was a sign of high status. To achieve the desired seasoned appearance, people would sometimes have their servants smoke their pipes for them.
The pipe was not simply a tool for smoking tobacco, but also a marker of people's identities and places in the social hierarchy," says Bergman Carter, who has studied the social aspects of tobacco smoking in 18th-century Sweden. To describe these differences, Bergman Carter has introduced the concept of smokeways, roughly comparable to "smoking manners." The concept enables comparisons of how smoking practices differed between social classes. The study draws on archaeological finds of clay pipes from Sweden, as well as images and archival material.
A key part of the archaeological material comes from an excavation at Slussen in Stockholm in 1984, where about six tons of 18th-century clay pipes were found in a deposit associated with pipe manufacturer Olof Forsberg. Until now, archaeological pipe finds in Sweden have mainly been used to date archaeological contexts and to map trade routes. In England and the Netherlands, the two major pipe-producing countries, previous research has focused on the social aspects of pipe smoking.
"I compare finds of pipes and pipe fragments with images and archival material, including descriptions of manufacturing methods, price lists from pipe factories, records from the Swedish parliament and printed advertisements from various pipe manufacturers. Taken together, they provide a picture of how people smoked and how smoking was connected to socioeconomic status," says Bergman Carter. Under the right circumstances, traces of differences in manufacturing methods, quality and price can be identified in the archaeological record.
Pipes varied considerably in appearance. "Pipes used by people from the lower social classes were coarser, unpolished and more likely to have shorter stems, while those from higher social classes smoked longer, more carefully finished and polished pipes. Pipes were therefore not merely everyday objects; they were also visible markers of socioeconomic status," says Bergman Carter.
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