BAR International: Negotiating African-American Ethnicity in the 17th-Century Chesapeake : Colono tobacco pipes and the ethnic uses of style (Series #1042) (Paperback)

This thesis is based on the analysis of over 1,000 clay pipes, of the Colono type, found at three sites on the east coast of the USA within the Chesapeake Bay. The author discusses the archaeological context of the pipes and examines the types of decoration that are represented. In this, the 16th issue of The Archaeology of the Clay Tobacco Pipe, the subject matter returns to the east coast of the USA, last visited by the Chesapeake Bay volume (Number XII). A new, extended, typology for Colono pipes is presented, along with a detailed analysis of their chronology. A study of the archaeological evidence at these sites, together with a comparison of the stylistic elements present on the Colono pipes with examples from Mali in West Africa and from elsewhere in the African Diaspora outside North America, strongly supports previous arguments for an African ethnicity for the Chesapeake finds. The author links the increasing social hostility towards Africans in the area, as the century progresses, with changes in the styles observed onthe pipes "investing them with...a symbolic content...as a method of communicating cultural survival and ethnic solidarity." The work is of particular significance to prehistorians who lack the means of studying past societies using historical sources.