When the Smoke Clears

The aims of the project are twofold: to introduce the concept of smokeways as a heuristic tool for increasing current understandings of social aspects of tobacco smoking in 17th and 18th century Sweden, and to present a modus operandi for registering clay tobacco pipes from archaeological excavations in a manner that will enable wider interpretative potentials of the artefact group.
The project analyzes social proscriptions of tobacco smoking from the documentary record and clay tobacco pipes from the archaeological record in Sweden during the 17th and 18th centuries via the concept of smokeways.
Smokeways should understood as the mores of smoking and is believed to increase our current understanding of both clay tobacco pipes and tobacco smokings' functions as perfomative acts in negotiations of social distinction.
The project also focuses on evaluating and developing registration praxes in relational database environments for clay tobacco pipes as an artefact group.
The methodological aspects of registration praxes along with the concept of smokeways shall be employed on case studies consisting of clay tobacco pipe assemblages from both urban and rural sites.