Stone Pipes Research Articles

A cross-cultural study of the life history of stone pipes in the plains

This study documents the life history of Native American stone pipes in the Plains from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Source material derives from twenty-first century interviews, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric documents. Interviews with Native American pipestone carvers at Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota were conducted in 2013. Additional documentation is from ethnohistoric and ethnographic observations from Plains Tribes over three centuries. Important issues highlighted in this research include the identity of the carvers, variation in stone used for pipes, variation in the types of carving tools, and the importance of recycling red pipestone.

Fremont Smoke Mixtures: Botanical Analyses of Pipes from Wolf Village, Goshen, Utah

Over several field seasons, ceramic and stone pipes were recovered from the Fremont site of Wolf Village (AD 1000-1100). Nine of the more complete pipes included residue and burned dottle that were analyzed for macrobotanical and microbotanical remains. Three were subjected to FTIR. These analyses represent the first Fremont pipes ever analyzed for botanical remains, and the results reported in this paper provide conclusions regarding possible smoke mixtures used by the Fremont. Contents of the pipes included remains of tobacco, plants from the Amaranthaceae family, maize fragments, grasses, and various fuel woods.

Havana Tradition Platform Pipe Production and Disposition: Implications for Interpreting Regional Variation in Midwestern Hopewell Ceremonialism

This study documents the contexts of platform pipe creation, distribution, and disposition at Illinois Havana Hopewell Tradition (50 BC to AD 200–250) sites to identify regional variation in Hopewell ceremonialism and exchange. We observe that the large deposits of stone pipes buried during communal rituals in the Scioto Valley and the continued influence of the Hopewell Sphere of Interaction have skewed archaeological interpretation. Aside from the several large deposits, pipes are limited in the Scioto Tradition and seldom found in habitation areas. In Illinois, pipe fabrication debris commonly occurs in habitation areas along with numerous examples of pipe repair and maintenance. Local pipestones—often from northern Illinois Sterling deposits—predominate, and exotic imported pipestones are unusual. Pipes are rare inclusions with individual burials as indicators of status, spiritual prowess, achievement, or group membership. The high value placed on pipes as communal sacra in Ohio and their value in Illinois as items of personal influence parallels their common occurrence in Illinois and their unique context in Ohio Hopewell. This study of the contexts of pipe manufacture and deposition reinforces current discussions of such artifact assemblages as important in documenting local variations in political, social, and religious mortuary ceremonialism across the “Hopewellian sphere.”

Roman Aqueduct Flow Estimation Using Geomatic Measurement

The aqueducts built by the ancient Romans are among the most impressive evidence of their engineering skills. The water inside the aqueducts was transported for kilometers, exploiting only the slight but constant differences in altitude throughout the route. To keep the differences in height constant, the aqueducts could proceed underground or aboveground on well-known arched structures that supported lead, ceramic or stone pipes. In order to reconstruct the characteristics of these structures, it is necessary to carry out an accurate survey of the orthometric heights, and therefore the most suitable technology is geometric levelling. In this case, however, it is not applicable, and therefore here we propose an alternative methodology. The final goal of this work was to estimate the flow of some sectors of these aqueducts preserved in the area south of the city of Rome. This has two main purposes: The first is to reconstruct the flow rate of these aqueducts for historical studies; the second is to check how much the orthometric heights have changed over the centuries, in order to reconstruct the movements from a geophysical and geodynamic point of view. The latter analysis will be developed in a following phase of this research. For this purpose, a high-precision geomatic survey was carried out in the area under study, partly retracing a survey already carried out in 1917 whose purpose and methodologies are not known. The area has been affected by a gradual subsidence over centuries, including since 1917. The observed sections of the aqueducts showed average inclinations, slightly lower than the 2 per thousand that is reported in the literature for similar aqueducts. The measurements carried out allowed the flow rate of the two specific aqueducts to be estimated more accurately, both as they were originally and in the presence of deposits that have accumulated during the years of use of the aqueducts. The reconstruction of the initial geometry will later be used as a reference to estimate how much the geodynamic deformations of the area have deformed the aqueducts themselves.

Geomatic measurement of “New Aniene” and “Claudia” roman aqueducts for flows estimation

The aqueducts are the most impressive and original building of the ancient Rome. The aqueducts moved water only by gravity, being constructed with a slight downward slope, within conduits of stone, brick or concrete. All along valleys or plains, the conduit was supported by buildings with arches, or its contents were placed to pressure in lead, ceramic or stone pipes. The aim of this work is to study and determine the slope and so to evaluate the actual flows, considering also that the area is interested by crustal movements. To evaluate it a geomatic survey of a part of the New Aniene and Claudia roman aqueducts was realised. The measured average slopes have values close to the value of 2 %« described in ancient texts that report the details of the realization of the Roman works. From the slopes through a hydraulic model the flow rate has been calculated. The general lowering of the study area was also highlighted through the comparison of reconstructed lines slope and those realized in 1917, approximately equal to 0.45 m.

The first find of carbon nano- and microtubes and graphite mi- croflakes in carbonate “stone pipes” (island of Crete, Greece)

Relevance of the work. After finding carbon nanotubes in the so-called silicate “stone pipes” of Dzharakuduk (Uzbekistan) in 2016, we quickly began to accumulate material about discovering carbon nanominerals in similar objects in Kazakhstan, Israel, and India. And after a similar find on the island of Crete (but in carbonate “stone pipes”), it became possible to conduct some generalization for the Mediterranean region. Purpose of the work: identification of the features of the development of carbon nano- and micromineralization in the carbonate “stone pipes” of the island of Crete in comparison with previously known samples from silicate “stone pipes”. Methodology. The samples selected by the authors were studied using optical polarization (ATAMI microscope) and scanning electron microscopy with microdiffraction (SEM LEO SUPRA 50V), differential thermal analysis with mass spectrometric termination (DTA + TG + MS). Results. In the pores and caverns of pyro- and shock-metamorphosed organogenic calcite limestones in the outcrop on the coast of northern Crete (near Malia, Crete, Greece), some fibrous-diverse aggregates of carbon nano- and microminerals (carbon multilayer nano- and microtubes, as well as microflakes of multilayer “graphenes”externally replaced by graphite) with carbonate “stone pipes” almost completely cut off by sea erosion. Conclusions. The first comprehensive study of carbon nano- and micromineralization in the carbonate “stone pipes” of Crete Island allows us to conclude that they are formed as a result of the explosive reaction of silanes that were part of the primary hydrocarbon-like fluid with an aqueous-oxygen atmosphere below the earth’s surface at high temperatures (T> 1250 ° C) and pressure (P> 40 Pa).

From the Island of the Blue Dolphins: A Unique Nineteenth-Century Cache Feature From San Nicolas Island, California

ABSTRACT A cache feature salvaged from an eroding sea cliff on San Nicolas Island produced two redwood boxes containing more than 200 artifacts of Nicoleño, Native Alaskan, and Euro-American origin. Outside the boxes were four asphaltum-coated baskets, abalone shells, a sandstone dish, and a hafted stone knife. The boxes, made from split redwood planks, contained a variety of artifacts and numerous unmodified bones and teeth from marine mammals, fish, birds, and large land mammals. Nicoleño-style artifacts include 11 knives with redwood handles and stone blades, stone projectile points, steatite ornaments and effigies, a carved stone pipe, abraders and burnishing stones, bird bone whistles, bone and shell pendants, abalone shell dishes, and two unusual barbed shell fishhooks. Artifacts of Native Alaskan style include four bone toggling harpoons, two unilaterally barbed bone harpoon heads, bone harpoon fore-shafts, a ground slate blade, and an adze blade. Objects of Euro-American origin or materials include a brass button, metal harpoon blades, and ten flaked glass bifaces. The contents of the cache feature, dating to the early-to-mid nineteenth century, provide an extraordinary window on a time of European expansion and global economic development that created unique cultural interactions and social transformations.

Hunter-gatherer tobacco smoking: earliest evidence from the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America

Chemical analysis of residue extracted from stone pipes and pipe fragments excavated at sites in the southern Pacific Northwest Coast of North America demonstrate that hunter-gatherers smoked the psychostimulant tobacco (Nicotiana sp.) by at least AD 860. Non-farming ethno-historic Native Americans throughout the west gathered and sometimes cultivated tobacco for ritual and religious purposes, but until now the antiquity of the practice on this part of the continent was unknown. Method validation includes chemical characterization of a suite of smoke plants and experimental reproduction of “smoked” pipe chemistry; results indicate biomarkers are traceable for several species commonly smoked by ethnographic native peoples, including tobacco (nicotine, cotinine), tree tobacco (anabasine), and kinnikinnick (arbutin). Developed methods—where residue is extracted directly from the stone or clay matrix of whole and fragmentary archaeological pipes—may be applied in similar studies investigating the spread and use of ritual smoke plants in the ancient Americas and elsewhere.

Heritage Preservation

Previous articleNext article FreeCurrent ApplicationsHeritage PreservationL. W. BartonL. W. Barton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreVisions for the Past from the Chickasaw NationOnce the purview of looters, collectors, antiquarians, and thieves, the material remains of the Chickasaw past increasingly rest in the hands of the Chickasaw Nation—a democratic tribal republic in south‐central Oklahoma, home to many Chickasaw people. With the recent amicable appropriation of both private lands and archaeological collections, the Chickasaw leadership charges itself with the responsibility for stewardship and exploration of its material heritage. Now, as both sponsors and visionaries, the Chickasaw Nation generates the energy behind the reinvention of a scattered historical legacy.Figure 1. Eighteenth‐century stone pipes from Chickasaw sites around Tupelo, Mississippi (courtesy of the Chickasaw Nation Heritage Preservation Division; photo Ian W. Brown, courtesy of the Peabody Museum and the President and Fellows of Harvard University).View Large ImageDownload PowerPointForcibly removed to Indian Territory by the U.S. government in the 1830s, the Chickasaw people left both their ancestral landscape and the material remains of its occupation to expansion and development. Today, the leaders of the Chickasaw Nation, headquartered in Ada, Oklahoma, are working to reconnect it to its history by acquiring properties near Tupelo, Mississippi, the center of Chickasaw territory during the eighteenth century. This program does not end with acquisition: the Chickasaw Nation also sees to the protection of these properties and sponsors research on the cultural history of its ancestral home.In 2003 a delegation from the Governor’s Office of the Chickasaw Nation met with a group of Tupelo‐area collectors and researchers from the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University. Assembled at the behest of tribal historian Richard Green, the meeting led to an agreement to transfer an enormous collection of Chickasaw cultural effects, mostly funerary items, salvaged by the collectors Julian Riley, Steve Cook, and Buddy Palmer to the Chickasaw Nation.As urban expansion in northern Mississippi ripped through the buried remains of the Chickasaw past, Riley, Cook, and Palmer—all lifelong students of local Indian artifacts and history—initially amassed their collections by picking through the bulldozed back‐dirt of highways and housing projects. They self‐published their findings regarding the locations of the abandoned Chickasaw villages in 1980 and attempted to enlist professional archaeologists in enhancing their part‐time research. However, because of the political, legal, and ethical complications surrounding the possession and trade of Native American grave goods, university archaeologists were reluctant to participate. Finally, as a result of Chickasaw Governor Bill Anoatubby’s persistence, Riley, Cook, and Palmer agreed to donate their holdings to the Chickasaw Nation in exchange for legal indemnity and compensation for their scholarly efforts. No money was exchanged for the artifacts themselves. The Chickasaw Nation then contracted with the Cobb Institute of Archaeology to catalog, curate, and assign provenience data to the remains. According to Cobb archaeologist Brad Lieb, the locational information provided by the collectors expands “our understanding of Chickasaw settlement patterns during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries,” while the collections “provide an invaluable material reference for the life‐ways of the Chickasaw people … up to the point of removal.”In 2005, with the help of a grant from the Chickasaw Nation, the Archaeological Conservancy purchased a 35‐acre parcel near Tupelo—a portion of a ridgetop historically occupied by the Chickasaw that has significant archaeological potential. By leasing it from the conservancy the Chickasaw Nation preserves its access and connection to an ancestral landscape.According to Anoatubby, “Archaeological acquisition, conservation, and research are a vital part of our overarching efforts to expand the scope of knowledge of Chickasaw history, heritage, and culture.” He says that he feels a responsibility to do everything he can to assist those who are working to advance and expand the knowledge of the tribe’s history and culture. The Chickasaw Nation, he says, “will continue to explore every avenue available, because everything we learn about Chickasaw history inspires us to continue our quest to discover more.” Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 3June 2007 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/517589 Views: 240Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Miwa Tsuji, Yuji Higashi, Yoshiaki Iwase, Toshiro Fujimoto, Masaki Sekine, Toshiyo Tamura, Yoshio Mitsuyama , Journal of Life Support Engineering 21, no.44 (Jan 2009): 158–163.https://doi.org/10.5136/lifesupport.21.158

Smoking and culture: the archaeology of tobacco pipes in eastern North America

Smoking has played an important role in the cultures of North America since ancient times. Because of the ceremonial and ritual aspects of the practice in Native American societies, smoking pipes are important cultural artifacts. The essays in The Culture of Smoking constitute the first sustained interpretive study of smoking pipes, focusing on the cultural significance of smoking both before and after European contact. Pipes lend themselves to anthropological as well as archaeological analysis in part because they are more ceremonial than utilitarian. Thus, while their styles and provenance can reveal something about trade relationships, cultural transfer, and aesthetic influences, they also provide important information about the nature of ritual in a particular society. As the contributors demonstrate, pipes offer a window through which to view the symbolic, ideological, and political roles that smoking has played in North American societies from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century. The eleven essays included range widely over time and region, beginning with a case study of pipes and mortuary practices in the Ohio Valley during the Early Woodland Period. Subsequent chapters examine stone pipes from coastal North Carolina during the Late Woodland Period and the role pipes played in interregional interaction among protohistoric Native American groups in the Midwest and Northeast. Other essays explore the variety of cultural and political uses of pipes during the period of European contact. The final section of the book focuses on smoking in Euro-American contexts of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The innovative interpretive approaches taken by the contributors and the broad historical perspective will make The Culture of Smoking a model for examining other categories of material culture, and the volume will be welcomed by anthropologists and historians as well as archaeologists. Sean M. Rafferty is associate professor of anthropology at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Rob Mann is the southeast regional archaeologist for Louisiana and is based in the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University.

Figurines, Flint Clay Sourcing, the Ozark Highlands, and Cahokian Acquisition

AbstractAt the pinnacle of Eastern Woodlands’ prehistoric cultural development, Cahokia has been interpreted as a political and economic power participating in prestige-goods exchanges and trade networks stretching from the Great Plains to the South Atlantic. Among the more spectacular of the Cahokian elite artifacts were stone pipes and figurines made from a distinctive red stone previously identified as Arkansas bauxite. In this research, we used a combination of X-ray diffraction, sequential acid dissolution, and inductively coupled plasma analyses to establish the source of the raw material used in the manufacture of the red figurines and pipes that epitomize the Cahokian-style. Our research demonstrates that these objects were made of locally available flint clays. This finding, in conjunction with other evidence, indicate Cahokian exploitation of many mineral and stone resources focuses on the northern Ozark Highlands to the exclusion of other areas. These findings indicate that we must reassess the direction, extent, and role of Cahokian external contacts and trade in elite goods.

A Stone Pipe of Pan of the VthCentury B.C. from Drasχanakert

A Stone Pipe of Pan of the V^thCentury B.C. from Drasχanakert

Advanced uses of thermoset–marble compounds in construction: first stone pipe organ in the world

This paper describes the techniques used in the creation of a marble pipe organ; emphasizing the use of different thermoset resins in the joining and reinforcing of stone slabs. The mechanical properties (higher resistance to bending and compression, porosity, etc.) and acoustic–musical possibilities of the marble–thermoset pipes are explored. A fully working prototype organ was constructed (an organetto, 60 cm high, weighing 25 kg) built entirely of stone and thermosets, apart from such parts as springs and bellows. The favourable mechanical and acoustic results obtained from this organetto and, subsequently from large pipes, has made it possible to begin work on a marble pipe organ measuring 11 m high and weighing 40 tons.

Carved Steatite and Sandstone Tubes: Pipes for Smoking or Shaman’S Paraphernalia

Six broken and refitted carved stone pipes or tubes were recovered at the Coal Draw site (48H0469) in the southern Bighorn Basin in north-central Wyoming. In addition there were an unbroken tube and pieces offive others. Several different types of carvable stone are represented, many of which are not found locally. These items may or may not be associated with a large Dinwoody style petroglyph panel nearby. They may also have been burial offerings, since a human skull fragment and a probable human molar were found in the immediate area. Ritual breakage of most of the items is suggested. It is also suggested that this occurred while the items were in containers such as pipe bags, and that they were not removed afterward.

“Underground Manchester” at the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry

Exhibit Reviews “UNDERGROUND MANCHESTER” AT THE GREATER MANCHESTER MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY CHRISTOPHER HAMLIN “Underground Manchester” is a new permanent exhibition in the rapidly expanding Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Its subject is the water and sewerage of Manchester and, more broadly, the history and culture of modern public health engineering. Developed by a team led by Alan Wilson, with designers Deborah Conibear and Nadine Bell and model maker Colin Buckman, the exhibit opened in spring 1988, financed by the museum and North West Water, the regional water utility. “Underground Manchester” is truly underground. One enters by descending into the cavernous brick warehouses beneath the Liver­ pool Road Station, the eastern terminus of George Stephenson’s pioneering Liverpool & Manchester Railway, and the entire exhibit is housed in a winding tunnel beneath the station. The visitor’s first impression is aural: before there is anything to be seen but a descending staircase, one hears the drone of an Anglican funeral service interspersed with what 19th-century doctors would have called a “productive cough.” Turning a corner at the bottom, one faces a diorama: a child’s funeral in 19th-century Manchester. It brings one face-to-face with the problem that is the exhibit’s focus: the unhealthy environment of the rapidly growing industrial city, and the corre­ sponding magnitude of the technical achievements that have so greatly diminished the effect of what Victorian sanitarians called “the filth diseases.” The coughing fades as one begins a chronological journey through the history of sanitary engineering, beginning with the water-carriage waste disposal systems of a Roman military camp and an Augustinian abbey. Later sections take up Manchester’s early attempts to provide Dr. Hamlin teaches in the Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. His article on “William Dibdin and the Idea of Biological Sewage Treatment” appeared in Technology and Culture 29 (April 1988): 189-218.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X791/3201-0007$01.00 97 98 Christopher Hamlin itself with water, from the ill-fated Stone Pipe Company of the early 19th century to the highly controversial mid-century acquisition of Thirlmere, in the English Lake District, as one of the city’s principal sources of water. There are also sections devoted to a host of connected issues: a disastrous flood of the Irwell valley, the city’s problems with the cost-cutting contractors who built many of its sewers, and its role in the development of biological sewage-treatment processes. About two-thirds of the way through one comes to the high point, a walk through a 10-meter stretch of a main brick sewer (fig. 1). It is ill lit; roots hang from the ceiling; a rat leers out from one of the connecting tunnels; piles of stagnant filth cover the floor of another. There is the distant sound of slowly flowing sewage; indeed, there is everything but a sewage smell. One’s feet feel damp; it is hard to stifle a shiver. From the sewer one enters a reconstruction of the back garden of one of the turn-of-the-century, working-class terraced houses of a type that still dominates in northern England mill towns—the toilet in a closet in the corner of the garden, a tiny line for hanging out the dingy, smoke-infiltrated washing—and again the reality of urban sanitation in an earlier age is brought home. This introduces the main section of artifacts. Housed in what would have been their natural surroundings are a few of the ingenious schemes for the sanitary collection and removal of wastes that 19th-century sanitary reformers developed to outwit what they saw as the tendency of the poor to be defiantly dirty. Most fascinating—for children of all ages—is the self-flushing Tipper toilet (fig. 2), a few of which are still in use in northwestern England. A cistern suspended slightly off balance is filled by a slow drip—in actual use it might have received the gray water from the household—so that when a certain level is reached the entire cistern will tilt and flush the pan, its own...

An Unusual Classic Period Burial from Las Colinas, Salt River Valley, Central Arizona

ABSTRACTIn April 1961, a contractor's excavation turned up the burial of a partially cremated male near mound 4 of the Classic period Las Colinas site in the Salt River Valley, central Arizona. Grave goods included an incised bone wand, a stone pipe, a small 3/4-grooved axe, and unworked Glycymeris sea shells.

The Seven Pipes of the Dakota Sioux

Ceremonial uses of the seven major pipes of the Dakota Sioux are described. According to the older generation the original pipe was made of bone and clay. After the calf bundle was presented to the Sioux nation, a stone pipe was used for religious purposes, and in fact from that time seven pipes were used. The first pipe was used to pray to the Great Spirit, which was done by pointing the pipe to the four winds and to heaven and earth. The pipe was filled with tobacco and pointed to the rising sun. Prayers were made to the Great Spirit that nothing would happen, and that everyone would be happy through the day. Then the pipe was lighted, and all the people that took part in the ceremony smoked the pipe. A pipe pointing to the east is a wish for a good day and that all will be happy through the day. When pointed to the west, it is a wish for a good rest and that no enemies will bother during the night. Pointed to the south is a wish for good health, and that the buffalo and other animals will not vanish. When pointed to the north, a prayer is made that the weather will not be severe, and yet that plenty of moisture will allow the grass to grow, so the animals will not vanish. When pointing to heaven, a prayer is made to the Great Spirit that all creatures and all the good scenery will not vanish. When pointing the pipe to the earth, they pray for the dead, and that someday they will join them somewhere. When the sun is setting, the pipe is again filled with tobacco and a prayer is made to the Great Spirit. The prayer of the Sun rise ceremony is repeated. The second pipe is called the Sun dance pipe. It is used only by the seven Sun dance chiefs, and Paper presented at a symposium on Plains Indian Religion held during the 26th Annual Plains Anthropo logical Conference, Lincoln, Nebraska, November 1968. in the Sun dance ceremony. The Sun dance chiefs supervise adoptions, marriages, and divorces. If a man or woman are going to get married they will first have to have permission from their parents. They then go before the Sun dance chiefs to get married. If the couple should happen to separate they will have to go before the Sun dance chiefs again before they are granted a divorce. The woman cannot marry again, and the man cannot go to any gathering. If it happens that they get married again, they are disgraced by the tribe. If another tribal member wants to marry into the Sioux tribe, he or she must go before the chiefs, or the council, and must be adopted into the tribe. This was accomplished by going through a ceremony before the chiefs to show that the individuals would be true and honest to the Sioux tribe. Before the adoptions, marriages, or divorces are granted the individual concerned smokes the pipe with the seven Sun dance chiefs. This is how the second pipe is used in the Sun dance ceremony. The third pipe is called the preamble pipe. When holding a council meeting, one person holds the pipe and points it toward the heavens. This is part of the preamble: Oh, my Great Spirit from above cast eyes down upon me a poor and weak, which I am but nothing more. Pity me Great Spirit the land which you have bestowed upon me. As my happy hunting grounds there as you said I was to multiply my people with content and happiness. That this council meeting today will all go well. The fourth pipe, the peace pipe, all chiefs smoke during the council meeting. When this pipe is filled, 30 persons can smoke it. When the pipe is smoked up it will be refilled again. They do this until the meeting is adjourned. The fifth pipe is called the sweat hut pipe, or the Medicine man pipe. This pipe is used in the case of sickness, and it also has a ceremonial

A Tubular Stone Pipe (?) from Sonora

In December of 1954, Mr. and Mrs. Ruben Emrick of Conrad, Montana, found a broken sandstone object in an arroyo cut located 30 miles north of the town of Empalme near Ortiz in Sonora, Mexico (Fig. 1). They very graciously brought the artifact to the Amerind Museum for examination where it was repaired and studied. The object resembled the tubular stone pipes found in the Southwest (Figs. 2, 3). It had the exterior and inner proportions so characteristic of these pipes, which were produced by drilling out the pipe interior until it resembled a modern venturi tube having a constricted throat.

A New South African Culture?

A CLAIM to have distinguished a new material culture in South Africa is put forward by Dr. Ir. E. C. N. Van Hoepen, director of the National Museum, Bloemfontein (Argœologiese Navorsing, Dl. i St. 5), in describing a remarkable stone pipe from a shelter near Bethlehem. Its peculiarity lies in the ornamentation, a system of curved grooves and on one side a sinuous ridge ending in a reversed E, representing a snake. Similar pipes have previously been described, one of clay from the ash-heaps of stone huts at Vegkop by Van Riet Lowe and another of stone by Stow. Van Riet Lowe attributed the pipe he described to the Leghoya, dating the huts at about 1790, but Dr. Van Hoepen does not consider his reasoning or evidence satisfactory, and points out that stone huts are not a characteristic of Bantu culture, the Leghoya themselves using conical grass thatched huts, according to Stow. He himself sees in the pipes and the shelters closer affinities with Hottentot, Bushmen, and Xosa, but concludes that the three characters, the stone pipes, the stone huts and the ornamentation do not belong to any known African culture. We are, therefore, he holds, dealing with something new, a culture for which the name ‘stone-hut’ culture is proposed. This view, important as it is for the history of South African cultures, should be accepted with some caution. Its confirmation by further evidence will be awaited with interest.

Research Items

Indian Archaeology in Eastern Canada.—At the time of settlement of Eastern Canada by the French in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the country was inhabited by tribes who spoke entirely different languages—Algonkian and Iroquoian. Algonkian sites are located on the banks of streams and lakes, usually on the north and west, and avoid clay. The Iroquoian sites of the semi-permanent villages in many cases are on the tops of flat-topped peninsula-like sand hills, the surrounding land being suitable for corn and other vegetable foods. The characteristics of the Algonkian and Iroquoian cultures are differentiated by Mr. W. J. Wintemberg in Bulletin 67 of the National Museum of Canada. The stone artefacts from both Algonkian and Iroquoian sites consist of chipped, ground, and polished implements, but the Algonkians were pre-eminent as stone-workers, and their artefacts of this material excel those of the Iroquois in number, variety, and uses. Stone pipes, indisputably of Algonkian origin, are not known on their sites, with the exception of the so-called ‘Micmac’ pipes, which are late. Iroquoian stone pipes are of many different types. Objects of native copper are found in many different localities, but in most cases not on sites yielding Algonkian pottery, those found here probably belonging to the mound-builders. Very few are found on Iroquoian sites, and then as a rule from those of the earlier periods. Earthenware from both classes of sites consists of fragments, a few whole pots and a few pipes. The bone work of pre-European Algonkians is poor; but the Iroquois were highly skilled bone-workers, and no artefacts are more abundant on their sites than those made of bone.