Dear List mates,
    My student Scott Kitchens is working on a paper on ball clay smoking
pipes.  He has done a good deal of reading in the sources that we have,
but given the limited nature of our reference materials, this has not
been exhaustive.

    He has looked at Noel Hume (Colonial Artifacts), Pfeiffer (Tobacco
related assemblage ...), Humphrey (Clay pipes from old Sacremento),
Sackett (Hist. Clay Pipes of the Minnesota Area), Davey (Arch. of the
Clay Tobacco Pipe), Thomas' paper in South's Historic Site Arch. Papers,
as well as several general histories of smoking & pipes.  He has seen
Pfeiffer's bibliography (though we wouldn't have many of the entries).

    Scott has observed that several of our pipes have what appear to be
single small Roman letters (one appears to be an "F", another an "R") on
the sides of their spurs (the small extension below the bowls of some of
these pipes), but has not seen any mention of these marks in his
reading.  Can anyone give us any guidance in trying to identify the
function of these embossed marks or sources on them.

    Any help would be much appreciated.

    Christopher Murphy
    Department of History & Anthropology
    Augusta State University