Middle Earth Ranger Forum

Anyone know anything about this? Ruslana posted this piece with an interesting claim -
A clay pipe with a wooden mouthpiece.
A find from Novgorod dated to the 11th-12th century.

"An item from the collection obtained as a result of archaeological research in the Novgorod Kremlin (near the Sofia Bell Tower in 1995 and at the Likhudov building in 1996)".

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1398886407 ... th-century

I've done a cursory search for the report, and can't find anything on it. If anyone has better luck, I'd love to hear more! Especially how they arrived at a pre-Columbian contact date.

Is anyone aware of pre-tobacco smoking traditions in Europe or North Asia? The closest I can recall is Herodotus talking about Scythians doing "sweat lodges" with cannabis thrown on the central fire. But I'd never heard about anything resembling pipe smoking until after contact with the New World. In fact, I've a vague memory of reading an early reference to Spanish or English explorers finding native American pipe-smoking strange if not demonic at first.

Anyone have a solid reference one way or the other?

Yes actually. I saw that same photo and went on a excited research dive late last year. Let me see if I can find my sources again. Unfortunately, the dating from the ad is off and the pipes are in fact from a later period, post-Columbian Exchange. I'll look for further info tonight.

That's a relief, actually. I'd hate to think my mental model of the early medieval era was that wrong.

I mean, I guess we all know our models are wrong, just a question of how much and in what direction.