Final Thoughts and Future Directions

Abstract

Smoking plants and pipes are unusual among artifacts in that they play roles in so many cultural and social domains. Thus, their analysis can provide insights into a vast range of anthropological topics, including technology, social interaction, iconography, religious ideology, chronology, and ritual. This chapter includes thoughts about future directions in pipes and tobacco research, and offers concluding remarks on some of the research highlighted in the volume, Perspectives on the Archaeology of Pipes, Tobacco and other Smoke Plants in the Ancient Americas. Future research may include: additional residue studies (spectrographic chemistry techniques in combination with DNA, pollen, or phytolith analysis may have potential in this regard), geochemical sourcing studies, study of regional distribution patterns in the styles, raw materials, and iconography of smoking pipes (an ideal application of geographic information systems (GIS) software), and additional technological studies to better understand production and manufacturing techniques. Residue analysis in particular is a rapidly expanding area of research with vast potential, but much of the inquiry has historically focused on questions of subsistence, with scant attention to possible drug residues. This is despite abundant evidence in the archaeological record in the form of various drug delivery devices, smoking pipes being a notable example. Recent work has improved residue methods and expanded our understanding of pipes, but there remains great potential in this area of inquiry.