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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Pleasure of a Pipe

"Tobacco is the currant Coyn of Mary-Land, and will sooner purchase Commodities from the Merchant, then money."

— George Alsop, 1666

Pipe Smoking - Not Just for Men

Upper and lower front teeth badly worn with gaps
Skull of a male, 25 to 29 years old, with heavily worn pipe facets. Skull ca. 1660-1680, Patuxent Point site, Calvert County, Maryland. Smithsonian photo
Closeup of teeth worn down to the pulp.
Pipe facet formed in the teeth of the lower jaw of a female, aged 50 to 60 years old. Patuxent Point site, Calvert County, MD. Smithsonian photo

Many activities can affect the skeleton, if repeated again and again. The wear and tear of growing tobacco bent the backs of colonists, while the habit of smoking tobacco in clay pipes damaged and stained their teeth. As they clenched the pipe between their teeth, the abrasive clay of the pipe stem wore facets in the enamel of the teeth around the pipe. Eventually these facets not only left holes in the bite but could have exposed the pulp and led to abscesses.

Nearly everyone in the colonial Chesapeake, young and old, men and women, was smoking—a fact that only skeletal evidence could reveal.  Skulls of men, women, and even children from the 17th-Century sites of Patuxent Point show pipe facets, some so deep they caused abscessed teeth.

Read more about these pipes here: