**First Time At Auction**

Native American, midwestern United States (Ohio and surrounding area), ca. 100 BCE to 400 CE. An incredibly rare find and one of my favorites! Made from beautiful creamy white soapstone with pale pink and red iron oxide inclusions that give it the appearance of having small blooms on its surface, this is a fantastical pipe in the form of a seated skeleton holding a smaller skull on its lap. The skeleton lounges, almost casually, with its rictus grin and blank, hollow eyes slightly upturned as if to face the viewer. The skull on its lap also stares upward. Modern Iroquois have a legend that tobacco can bring a skeleton to life, and the ancient Hopewell people may have had a similar belief. Size: 3.5" L x 1.4" W x 3.25" H (8.9 cm x 3.6 cm x 8.3 cm); 4.4" H (11.2 cm) on included custom stand.

Smoking pipes seem to have played an important role in this culture, which had cultural contacts from sub-Arctic Canada to the southern United States and probably further south, into Mexico. The earliest evidence we have for the use of tobacco in this area comes from ca. 100 to 200 CE; in addition to tobacco, and often prior to it, we know from ethnohistorical accounts that people smoked a variety of other plants, including dogwood, juniper, sumac, and bearberry. These pipes were not just made for the simple act of smoking; they seem to have had a strong religious component as well, and various archaeological sites from the period, including the Hopewell Mound sites, have the remains of hundreds of destroyed platform pipes, including effigy ones like this. Others were buried with their owners individually. Effigy platform pipes are believed to be totemic spirits from Native cosmology.

Provenance: private Southern California, USA collection, acquired in the 1970s to mid-1980s

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#140769

Legs and possibly back of head have been repaired, but repairs are incredibly well done and almost impossible to see. Light surface wear commensurate with age. Incredible preservation of detail.