Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 1. (2019)
Oana Toda: Tobacco Clay Pipes from Rupea Castle and their Historical Context
Tobacco Clay Pipes from Rupea Castle and their Historical Context 123 Pipe number 12 was found in a floor leveling of the basement of one of the small houses ranging along the eastern precinct wall. The production and use period of the material trapped in that particular layer can be roughly dated to the late 17th and 18th centuries, and one knows that the respective houses were active in the same interval and demolished sometime during the 19th century. The last pipe retrieved from the middle castle (cat. 11) most likely originates from the upper precinct as it was found in a waste layer accumulated at the base of the upper basalt cliff, on the southeastern side. From inside the upper castle precinct, from rather unclear demolition layers and topsoil, come the rest of the artifacts in the catalogue (cat. 15, 9, 14). Apart from pipe number 15, which was found in the topsoil along the western precinct wall, the other two ended up in late 18th and early 19th demolition layers Fig. 3. Image of the houses from the upper precinct. next to (cat. 9) and on top of some of the private and public houses (cat. 14) which were still in use prior to 179018 (Fig. 3). DESCRIPTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF THE PIPE TYPES Half the clay pipes discovered in Rupea castle are extremely fragmentary. This motivated a more flexible approach towards the material, instead of a rigorous typology. In the further, the pipes will be presented as part of a general classification consisting of Turkish, (Turkish)Hungarian and Austro-Hungarian types, with specific comments on the artifacts, depending on their state of preservation. For the majority of the pipes belonging to the Turkish type just the shank and ring are preserved. Three fragments belonged to pipes made of red fabric (Pi. 1/1-3). The contexts are not helpful in dating the three pipe fragments, and the analogies are hard to point out given the fragmentation. Apparently, all of them are dated earlier than the archaeological contexts they were found in. Their quality varies as the piece under the first catalogue number displays red slip and a burnished surface (Fig. 5/1), while the other two (cat. 2 and 3) only have coarse finish. Nothing can be said of pipe number 3 (PL 1/3), because only its torus-shaped ring was preserved. The other two however display mold-made decorations of the ring (cat. 2) and cogwheel impressions on the ring and shank (cat. 1). Based on the ring and shank profiles, they seem to belong to variants that were most likely produced inside the Ottoman Empire from the second half of the 17th century, when the red fabric became dominant.19 The piece with the molded ring decoration (cat. 2, Fig. 5/2) also displays a peculiar shape of the lower part of the shank, in the point where it used to meet the missing keel. This is reminiscent of one of the Turkish-type products with interrupted profiles.20 However, the reduced length of the shank is different from those pieces. For seven of the smoking pipes kaolin clay was used (Pi. 1/4-10). This fabric composition determined their light coloring, especially when burned in oxidized atmosphere, as this is the case for five of them. Their shapes, however, vary and so do their production periods. 18 Toda 2019. 19 Gacic 2011,25. 20 Ridovics 2009, 67, fig. 8.
