clay tobacco pipes

I love finding bits of history, just there in the earth when we are digging, We are finding bits of old bottles, pottery, the obligitory blue china, and lots and lots of bits of clay tobacco pipe. I'm not a smoker, and never have been, and am in fact inclined to be a tad anti-smoking when pushed, but I just love finding these clay pipes. It feels like a connection to previous lives. We are here digging the ground, just as it has been dug and ploughed many times before us.

Maybe the pipe broke whilst the owner was at the plough, and the debris disgarded then and there? More likely the bits of broken pipe, china, glass and clinker were deliberately thrown down to break up the ground and aid ploughing.

Mostly we find the stem bits, but we have been lucky enough to find several fragments of, and two complete, bowls. I asked advice, and have been told the complete bowl shown with the ruler dates from about 1670. How amazing to have a connection with someone from that far back, to find it whilst doing what he/she was doing when it was thrown down - working the ground. The amazing thing is to think how long that bowl stayed in the ground as it was ploughed and re ploughed over the years.

Many thanks to Heath Coleman for her opinion and great website on clay pipes.