The Camera and the Pipe: Adjusting the Terminus Ante Quem of the Red-Slipped and Burnished Disc-Base Tobacco Pipes from Suba, Israel

Abstract

The Ottoman and British Mandate village of Suba is located approximately 7 km to the west of Jerusalem, and it is constructed on top of, and within, the remains of Belmont Castle, a Crusader-period fortress. The clay tobacco pipes in the Suba assemblage range in date from the 17th to the early 20th century c.e. Within this assemblage, there is one type of smoking pipe, the red-slipped burnished pipe, with disc-base, that apparently is not found outside of the southern Levant. According to Simpson, this smoking pipe is a “Palestinian type,” and based upon the archaeological record at Suba it is attributed to the mid-to-late 19th century. In this study, both archaeological data and historical images are used to propose a terminus ante quem of 1940 for the Palestinian disc-base smoking pipe. Apart from redating this clay pipe, the results of this investigation also provide information on three methodological issues. First, the people depicted in the historical photographs provide tentative insights on the gender of pipe smokers and on smoking’s social context during the early 20th century in the southern Levant. Second, this investigation underscores the usefulness of historical photographs for establishing the date of material culture found in archaeological contexts attributed to the late 19th through early 20th centuries. Third, this study demonstrates that changes in material culture are not concomitant with changes in political administrations and/or regimes in Palestine.