Digging Veritas - Rule (Breaking) & Religion - Beer and Some Tobacco

Pipe fragments, PM 980-3-10/100128.

17th-century European white clay pipe, PM 96-24-40/49173.

Blue and gray fragments of Westerwald mugs from Colonial Harvard Yard, PM992-9-10/94780.

Brown “Bellarmine” bottle base from Colonial Harvard Yard. PM 987-22-10/100147.

Note the German stoneware ale bottle with pewter lid, redware brazier, glass with ale, white clay pipes, and pewter dish. Still Life with Clay Pipes, by Pieter Claesz, 1636. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum.

The 1655 Harvard College Rules state: "Neither Shall hee without sufficient reason such as the President or his Tutor shall approve of, eyther take Tobacco or bring or permit to be brought into his Chamber strong Beere, wine, or strong water, or any other inebriating Drinke to the end that all excesse and abuse thereof may bee prevented."

Despite Harvard college rules generally forbidding drinking and smoking, archaeological excavations uncovered numerous ceramic pipe stems, wine bottle fragments, and fragments of ceramic ale bottles. These artifacts were found in such large numbers between the Old College and Indian college that the site began to resemble a tavern rather than an educational institution. This surprised the students, and our view of early Puritan Harvard changed to match the artifacts discovered beneath our feet.

White ceramic pipe stems and bowls were used throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to smoke tobacco and can be used to date sites. The size of the borehole in the stem changed over time, becoming smaller. White clay pipes were made in Europe, while red clay pipes were manufactured locally. The large quantity of pipe fragments recovered from Harvard Yard indicates not only that people broke Harvard’s smoking rules in the 17th and 18th centuries, but also that they invested in the endeavor.