ABSTRACT
For decades, archaeologists have dealt with Chesapeake-made smoking pipes of the early colonial era as symbols as indicators of social identity or as media for social communication. This chapter discusses prior research regarding pipes made and used in the colonial Chesapeake. It then focuses on the discussion of a new way to address the problem of social identity by using the evidence for exchange to address questions about control within the pipe- making industry and to ascertain whether these artifacts might reasonably be assumed to reflect the desires of the colonys large laboring class. The chapter addresses equally compelling themes regarding social life in early Virginia through a consideration of these pipes as objects of exchange. Other archaeologists developed Harringtons observation that local pipes of the colonial period shared attributes with both Native and European pipe traditions in the consideration of how acculturation influenced artifact assemblages and the societies they represented.
