Hugvísindasvið The clay tobacco pipe collection from Hólar, Iceland A case study Ritgerð til MA-prófs í fornleifafræði Aline Wacke Október 2014 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Dr. Gavin M. Lucas, my research supervisor for his patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement and useful critiques of this work. I would also like to thank Ragnheiðar Traustadóttir, the manager of the Hólar research project, who gave me the possibility to practice on this material. She also offered assistance with the Intrasis database and pointed me to helpful literature. My grateful thanks is also extended to Dr. Torbjörn Brorsson for his help with the ICP analyses, the thin sections, the thermal experiments and all the long and fruitful discussions. I would like to thank Arne Åkerhagen for his assistance with the identification of the English clay pipes. Furthermore I would like to express my thanks to Dr. Natascha Mehler in pointing me in the right directions especially in the very beginning of this thesis and to Dr. Tara Carter who helped me stay on track. I am grateful for Priscilla Bjarnason for checking the English spelling. Finally I wish to thank my colleagues and friends Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir, Margrét Valmundsdóttir and Þuríður E. Harðardóttir for their help. 1 Index Acknowledgements................................................................................................................................................. 1 Index....................................................................................................................................................................... 2 1 Introduction........................................................................................................................................................ 3 2 History of tobacco consumption........................................................................................................................ 5 3 State of Research................................................................................................................................................ 9 3.1 Clay tobacco pipes: origins and production methods ................................................................................... 9 3.2 Research Issues........................................................................................................................................... 15 4 Methods............................................................................................................................................................. 33 4.1 The database ............................................................................................................................................... 33 4.2 Dating of clay tobacco pipes....................................................................................................................... 41 4.3 Signs of Use................................................................................................................................................ 44 4.4 The question of Origin and ICP-AES analyses........................................................................................... 45 4.5 Quality aspects............................................................................................................................................ 48 5 Results ............................................................................................................................................................... 54 5.1 The collection ............................................................................................................................................. 54 5.2 Dating ......................................................................................................................................................... 56 5.3 Origin.......................................................................................................................................................... 59 5.4 Quality ........................................................................................................................................................ 64 5.5 Usage .......................................................................................................................................................... 68 5.6 Distribution................................................................................................................................................. 69 6 Conclusions....................................................................................................................................................... 73 6.1 Part 1 –Interpretative issues........................................................................................................................ 73 6.2 Part 2 –Future work/prospects .................................................................................................................... 81 7 References......................................................................................................................................................... 84 8 Appendix........................................................................................................................................................... 87 2 1 Introduction The following master‘s thesis will be dealing with the collection of tobacco clay pipes from the bishop‘s see at Hólar. Hólar itself is situated in the North-West of Iceland in the valley of Hjaltadalur. The seat of the bishopric was founded in 1106 and excavations were undertaken from 2002 until 2010. The excavations unearthed an extensive number of houses and structures ranging from the Viking age up to the 18th century. With a densely populated area a vast amount of finds came to light. The author of this thesis has analysed all available clay tobacco pipes from this site and will present the first results below. In the beginning a brief history of the consumption of tobacco shall be given, followed by an overview of older and newer research with a closer focus on the clay pipe research done in Iceland up to this day. In chapter four the methods used for the analyses will be presented. Subsequently the first results will be shown and finally a conclusion will be drawn. The aim of this thesis is to explore the potential of clay tobacco pipe analysis in Iceland. This is a case study and will be focusing on four themes: dating, origin, quality and usage. As clay pipes are commonly used for dating this will be the first theme to be scrutinised in chapter five. The provenance of pipe products will be interesting to explore as there are rather small scale production sites in Denmark which are found in the Hólar collection. Most of the Danish clay pipes were not as greatly traded in numbers as the ones from the well known centres of England and The Netherlands. A new angle for the clay pipe research will be introduced next. The issue of quality has been touched on in various publications but it was always more of a subjective approach. This thesis has defined four quality groups and will try to present some criteria tied to each group. In doing so, it should be possible to achieve statistical data and look at the results drawn from it. A closer look at use patterns will follow. The usage of clay tobacco pipes has been documented before but only in the form of a comment whenever some particularly dominant character was observed. In this case study, all clay pipes were looked at for the use patterns. The methods are described in chapter four while results follow in chapters five and six. An appendix has been added to this work in form of a CD. It can be found in the back of this master’s thesis including the complete clay tobacco pipe collection from Hólar to the present day. Almost all of the analyses are done by the author herself. This takes the form of an excel-sheet and is exported from the Intrasis database used for the Hólar site. 3 It should be mentioned at this point that the author of this thesis is new to the subject of clay tobacco pipe studies therefore it will not be surprising that mistakes might occur during the analyses. These errors, however, should not be a hindrance as the overall results still show the correct tendency. Figure 1.1: Bowl fragment made of reddish clay. This fragment was defined as belonging to the best quality and it is unused (photo taken by A. Wacke). 4 2 History of tobacco consumption The aim of this thesis is to focus on clay tobacco pipes which present only one way to consume tobacco. There are, however, other ways to take tobacco as well as a whole history about the use of tobacco. At this point there will be given only a brief overview about the topic. Tobacco derives from plants like Nicotiana rustica and Nicotiana tabacum. The specific origins of these plants are lost. It is known, however, that they broadly came from South and North America. These plants were used early on in a dried form to be smoked by the native population of these continents. Tobacco and smoking was introduced to Europe in the 16th century. The practice was observed among native tribes by explorers to the New World and other encounters with Amerindians in both Americas. After its introduction to Europe it spread rapidly across the whole continent and from Europe the habit spread to India, China, Africa, the Philippines, Japan and others. The tobacco plant first appeared at the Portuguese court in Lisbon in