It is commonly assumed that when excavating tavern sites of the colonial period one should expect to encounter numerous clay tobacco pipe fragments for the obvious reasons. However, it appears that this is not necessarily the case. A case in point: a tavern site I located recently (occupational date range: 1765-1803) resulted in the recovery of approximately 20 white clay tobacco pipe fragments. Granted, our testing has been minimal but in no case have we found more than one pipe fragment per 2.5- foot square test unit. A colleague of mine has found similar results at a tavern site partially excavated in Portland, Maine. Have others found this to be true on some tavern sites or is this just a fluke? Conversely, on another 18th century homestead site that was occupied for twenty years (1765-1785), we have recovered over 12,000+ clay tobacco pipe fragments. Primary documents indicate that the occupants also retailed goods from the home and this may account for the unusually large number of pipe fragments. In one five foot square unit we uncovered 498 tobacco pipe fragments! Ninety five percent of the clay pipe bowl fragments do not exhibit burning (no blackened interiors), and thus I have concluded that the majority of pipes were not smoked when broken. This would add support to the retail theory in that it's likely that a shipment of pipes meant for retail were damaged upon shipment, and discarded about the site as sheet refuse. Does this seem a reasonable explanation to others... that if pipe bowls lack a blackened interior then they likely were never smoked? I suppose it depends how many times the pipe was smoked. If it was smoked only once or twice perhaps the interior would not be stained. Sounds like I need to purchase some pipes and pass them out to smokers. At any rate, I would be very interested to hear other peoples comments on tavern sites and the number of pipe fragments found and on whether unblackened pipe bowl interiors is a good criteria for determining pipes that were never smoked. Tim Dinsmore archaeological consultant