A Rare NC Engraved Pipe
The prehistoric inhabitants of the Southeast have been smoking tobacco mixes for thousands of years. By far the majority of the smoking instruments used by these people were simple designs of the elbow and tube types until after about AD 1000 when more intricate types were introduced. Around AD 800 a cultural manifestation came into being in the mountains and foothills of North Carolina and Virginia. Today it is called the Sunken Cave or Sink Hole Culture because the natives often buried their dead in mountain sink holes. Some of the interments were reverent burials in carefully prepared plots while others were the result of dead bodies apparently simply being tossed into these sunken caves. But the strange burial locations and practices are not what these people are known for today. That distinction belongs to the pipe category that is considered one of the most graceful and beautiful ever made by the prehistoric natives – the obtuse angle alate pipes.
This pipe style is a sort of amalgam since it seems to be a mix of elbow and platform pipes. The term obtuse angle means that the pipe bowl is set at an angle from the platform or stem that is more than 90 degrees and usually at 120 degrees or more. The term alate is French derived and translates as winged. This means the pipe platform or stem is often thin and usually wide with wing-like projections on each side of the stem hole. Obtuse angle alate pipes are rare with perhaps a couple hundred ever being found. The writer has heard old time collectors, from the 1940’s-1960’s, state that after twenty-thirty years of seriously searching for Indian artifacts, they had found none to maybe one or two of these unique steatite or soapstone pipes. Today almost all of these thousand or so year old relics are black steatite. But they began as being grey or green or brown since soapstone does not naturally occur in the color black. So how did this color change come about? Simple! The natural oils on human hands gradually altered the steatite shade after probably hundreds of ancient hands held these revered pipes for hundreds of years.
The pipe pictured with this article was found in Caldwell County, North Carolina. It is 5 ¼” long (stem) by 2 ½” high (bowl) with the bowl being slightly oval in cross section and is 1 1/16” by 1 ¼” with a flared rim. The alate platform is 1 5/16” wide by 11/16” thick and is in a flattened diamond shape in cross section. The pipe is made of a high grade steatite and is of a well polished black color. All these attributes make this a rare and desirable pipe. And then there are the engravings!
In 1971, the late Floyd Painter who was editor of the Chesopien Archaeological Journal authored an article entitled “The Concentric Rectangles: A Recurring Decorative Motif Having Possible Macro-Religious Significance”. This article discussed the engravings found on pipes from the Southeast as to the various designs and their meanings. These incised motifs include concentric rectangles and squares; chevrons; stairs or step-up designs; zigzag or lightning lines; circles and crosses or cardinal directions insignias. Seeing and describing these motifs is an easy task but attempting to understand their meanings to the ancients is much more difficult, if not impossible. Were these figures some type of hieroglyphic writing? Or were they ceremonial/religious symbols? Or could they have been clan or cult markings? Early European explorers made note of tattoos and painted body markings on the Indians and also on their possessions but made almost no effort to interpret their meanings. These early Europeans also recorded that pipes and tobacco were used by the natives in invoking war and peace; in sealing treaties and friendship agreements; in prayers to please and appease their gods; and as offerings to Mother Earth for her bounty. Could these pipe engravings, from a thousand years ago, be related to all these seventeenth century rites, thus being rolled into one big picture ceremonial/religious prayer?
This Caldwell County pipe has concentric square and rectangle engravings on the bottom of the platform. The top of this stem features eight small engraved squares, a circle within a square, a cross within a circle, what appears to be a strange arrow design and each side of the platform has deeply engraved straight lines. The bowl originally had engravings, which is almost unheard of for this pipe style, but they are so worn that no accurate descriptions can be determined. Indeed all the pipe incisings are worn probably from its many years of being held in human hands. Noted in the photo of the top of the platform is a worn through area near the bowl. This probably came from thousands of stem hole cleanings that eventually developed into this opening. It was probably filled with clay in prehistoric times so the pipe could be smoked.
Again, the estimate of the number of these pipes ever found is most likely not over two hundred. Of that total, maybe fifty have been discovered with engravings of any type which makes this pipe exceedingly rare. But rarity and subtle beauty are almost dismissed as I hold it and wonder about the meaning to the ancients of these strange and unique incised elements on this Rare NC Engraved Pipe.
REFERENCES:
Coe, Joffer L.
“Excavating in a Parking Lot at Morrow Mountain State Park”,
SOUTHERN INDIAN STUDIES, Vol. 1, No. 1
1949
Coe, Joffre L.
“The Formative Cultures of the Carolina Piedmont”,
TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
1964
Hariot, Thomas
A BRIEF AND TRUE REPORT OF THE NEW FOUND LAND OF VIRGINIA
1585
Hart, Gordon
HART’S PREHISTORIC PIPE RACK
1978
Maus, James E.
“An Engraved Obtuse Angle Alate Pipe”,
CENTRAL STATES ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL, Vol.38, No. 1
1991
Maus, James E.
“The Marion Alate-Stemmed Monitor Pipe”,
CENTRAL STATES ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL, Vol. 52, No. 4
2005
Painter, Floyd
“Concentric Rectangles: A Recurring Decorative Having Possible Macro-Religious Significance”,
THE CHESOPEAN, Vol. 9, Nos. 5-6
1971
West, George
TOBACCO PIPES AND SMOKING CUSTOMS OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS
1934