Abstract
Smoking pipes discovered in archaeological contexts demonstrate that Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America have practiced smoking for over 4,500 years. Archaeometry and ancient residue metabolomics provide evidence for the association of particular plants with these artifacts. In this article, we synthesize recent research on ancient smoking and present current knowledge on the spatiotemporal distribution of smoking in the past. The presence of stone smoking pipes in the archaeological record is paired with our understanding of past plant use based on chemical residue analyses to create a picture of precontact smoking practices. Archaeological pipe data demonstrate that smoking was a widely distributed practice in the inland Northwest over the past several thousand years, but not on the coast. Distributional data—including positive and negative evidence from chemical residue studies—show that tobacco was an important smoke plant in the region as early as around 1,410 years ago and as far north as the mid-Columbia region. Ancient residue metabolomics contributes to a richer understanding of past use of specific plants through the identification of tobacco species and other indigenous plants, includingRhus glabra,Cornus sericia, andSalviasp., as contributing to the chemical residues in ancient pipes.
Highlights
This study has considered the spatiotemporal distribution of this artifact type and broader implications for understanding smoking in the past
Spatial lacunae in our testing (in Secwepemcor Nlaka’pamux areas, for example) may mean that we are missing evidence of ancient tobacco use in the northern Plateau
Summary
Methods and MaterialsTo test hypotheses outlined in this study, we took an interdisciplinary approach that draws from varied methods and sources. The study includes an updated synthesis of published and unpublished data on the distribution of pipes in the region originally compiled by Damitio (2018), and chemical and ancient residue metabolomics studies of a sample of these archaeological pipes. To explore the precontact distribution of smoking across time and space, we synthesized data from (1) a review of published and gray literature, (2) an exploration of the collections held by numerous institutions in the United States and Canada via the Reciprocal Research Network (RRN; see Rowley 2013), and (3) a systematic search of the collections databases of the Washington State University Museum of Anthropology (WSU MoA), which curates extensive collections from over 600 sites in the Pacific Northwest (Damitio et al 2018; for details of search methodology, see Supplemental Text 1). Site location and other data were compiled in a Microsoft Access database and exported to ArcGIS Desktop 10 for visualization and analysis
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