by V. Gary Hentry, Asheville, North Carolina
Volume 67, Number 3, July 2020 Central States Archaeological Journal
Figure 1. A steatite medicine tube that was prehistorically converted into a smoking pipe. The two small black triangles point to stem hole perforations on each end.
The subject of this paper is an artifact obtained from the Harwood family that were, in turn, the subject of an article in an earlier issue of this Journal (Henry 2018). Ray Harwood was an acquaintance of mine made through archaeological endeavors so important to the two of us. I became familiar with the family’s archaeological activities by reading various archaeological publications and made contact with Ray. I visited him on numerous occasions, borrowed literature from his extensive library and had numerous discussions with him and his wife (Marguerite) regarding archaeological pursuits. Ray called me one day and asked if I would be interested in acquiring his artifact collection. Apparently, Marguerite had donated most of her part of their collection to the state archaeological agency and Ray was not satisfied with the outcome of that decision because the collection simply disappeared into storage facilities and was never heard from again. The Harwood family were unaware of any use that was made of the collection. Our discussions resulted in my acquisition of Ray’s collection.
I made extensive use of Ray’s collection, including publication of much of the material in various publications, always recognizing the collector and providing the family with copies of the publications in which artifacts from the collection appeared. At a later date, after Ray had passed away, his daughter Linette, contacted me and wanted me to come by because she had something for me. That something she had for me was additional relics in her possession that she wanted me to have. Included in these relics was the steatite artifact addressed in this paper. Unfortunately, the provenance of this relic was unknown. Marguerite, then living with Linette, thought that it was likely an artifact that was probably found by a local farmer owning land on which the family had hunted for artifacts and the relic was, therefore, given to Ray. Since the majority of their collection was from Western North Carolina (WNC) (Henry 2018), where the Harwood family resided, and were well known to other residents, it seems likely this relic was from WNC.
The steatite artifact depicted in Figure 1 seems to be a medicine tube, also known as a cloud blower or biconical pipe, that was being converted into a right angle smoking pipe on each end. It is 11 inches long and has been bored out from both ends but the bore holes never did meet to complete it into a finished tube. One end is larger (2 1/16 inches in outside diameter) (right end in Figure 1) than the other end (1 7/8 inches in outside diameter) and it is 1 1/16 inches in outside diameter at its smallest point in the middle. The bowl on the larger end is 4 5/16 inches deep and the bowl on the smaller end is 4 inches deep; this is lacking only 1 5/16 inches from being bored its entire length. The inside diameters are 1 13/16–1 7/8 inches (not perfectly round but more oval) at the larger end and 1 1/8 inches at the smaller end. At the smaller end, a perforation from the outside into the bowl was made at a distance of 3 ¾ inches from the end of the artifact to apparently serve for insertion of a hollow stem for using it as a pipe. The tube was broken at the point of this perforation and repaired by gluing it back together. Whether the break resulted from the work on the perforation or occurred afterward is unknown. At the larger end (4 inches from the end of the object) another perforation was started to also render it, when completed, into another smoking pipe. Thus, if finished, it would have been dual pipes and one pipe could have served as a handle in smoking the pipe on the opposite end.
References
Henry, V. Gary
2018. The Haywoods and Days of Yore. Central States Archaeological Journal 65(2): 104–105.
