Chris Murphy wrote:
>    Does anyone know off hand the date for the beginning of the use of
>terra cotta drain pipe in the U.S.?  I am referring to the commonplace
>red body pipe which is glazed on the outside with a purplish red glaze
>and comes in short sections that fit together with a flange on one end
>of each section.
>
>    My attempts so far to gain a date for the introduction of this
>common artifact have proved fruitless.  My guesstimate is early 20th
>century, but that is not as precise as I would like and may be
>altogether wrong.


This is one thing that needs some real decent archeologist-oriented study.
Tiles of all sorts and ages (like those on the U. of Ill. U-C Ag Eng page
at http://www.age.uiuc.edu/age357/tile.html) seem to be present on most of
the sites I've excavated from farms to urban and everything in between.
        I recently cataloged some papers for a local museum and ran through a
series of accounts and bills (nothing really amazing) for tiling and paving
the streets of Richmond, VA in 1865 and 1866 (just after the civil war when
the city was largely burned to the ground).  Tiles and drains of various
kinds were made and laid by the contractors, but it wasn't clear what form
they were.  From these documents and other info that I have seen it is
clear that the contractors were brick and tile makers and they built and
installed the entire system from the granite curbs to the outlet on the river.
        If someone has a decent reference to the forms, colors, glazes, and the
date ranges, etc. of tiles used here in the US of A, that would be grand.
I know a lot of it was imported and there seems to be a relatively active
"brick" list going on over on the island, but how about some sources for us
US archaeologists to have handy???

        Dan W.