Clay pipe stem (4/64ths bore, Lot 5 round feature)

About This Artifact

A clay pipe stem with a borehole measurement of 4/64ths of an inch was recovered from the round feature on Lot 5 by archaeologist Fiona Steele during Season 13 filming. Steele measured the borehole with calipers and applied the bore-diameter dating method, which placed the stem's manufacture between 1753 and 1800. The team noted that this date range was consistent with the mean date range of artifacts previously recovered from the feature.

The bore-diameter dating method was developed by archaeologist J. C. Harrington in 1954 and refined by Lewis Binford in 1962. Because English pipe stem bores decreased at a measurable rate over time as manufacturing techniques evolved, a measurement of the hole with calipers provides a reasonably narrow date range for stems manufactured between approximately 1620 and 1800. A 4/64ths inch bore falls in the late-eighteenth-century portion of that scale.

In the same episode the team also recovered large fragments of an ornate earthenware bowl that Steele identified as a utilitarian vessel for food preparation, datable between 1600 and 1800. Tansy Rudnicki uncovered a blue glass bead in the same feature that Laird Niven identified as a Venetian seed bead introduced in the second half of the 1600s. The pipe stem joins this assemblage of late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century material from the Lot 5 round feature.