French, not Dutch

 

 

One of the more interesting white clay tobacco pipes we find in St. Mary’s City is an elaborately molded pipe bearing two human figures, one female and the other male. These have been called both “Crusader and Huntress” pipes and “Pikeman and Minerva” pipes in the archaeological literature.

 

 

For decades, archaeologists have reported these as Dutch pipes based on a reference in 1975 in the grand old father of clay tobacco pipe studies, Clay tobacco Pipes for the Archaeologist by Adrian Oswald. We have found examples of these pipes at St. John’s, Smith’s Ordinary, The Calvert House site, and the Printhouse site. A particularly well preserved example was found at the Calvert House site and is illustrated here.

 

 

 

Recent scholarship suggests these are not the product of Holland, but rather were made in France. The foremost scholar of Dutch pipes, Don Duco, has categorically stated these are not of Dutch manufacture. A large number of these pipes were discovered at the French site of Pentagoet, in Maine.

 

 

Again, the incredibly international scope of trade and exchange in the Atlantic world is documented in the trash of the early Maryland colonists.