Update: Found a piece of a clay pipe bowl in my backyard in Roanoke and it turned out to be from the 1800s

Angela Harris · 2026-09-25T19:45:05.833251+00:00

Three weeks ago I was digging a spot for a new fence post behind my shed and hit something hard about a foot down. It was a curved piece of white clay with a little leaf pattern on it, so I posted a pic on a local history page and a guy from the Roanoke Valley historical group asked if he could come look at it. He came by Saturday with a loupe and said the stem hole and the molded leaf mark put it somewhere in the mid 1800s, probably a cheap trade pipe. I know it's just one broken pipe and not a lost city, but holding something a guy smoked 170 years ago in my own dirt is pretty cool. Anybody else found pipe stems or old pottery in their yard, and how did you figure out what it was?

💡Thought Shares

Loading…

Update: Found a piece of a clay pipe bowl in my backyard in Roanoke and it turned out to be from the 1800s | Archaeology Discoveries - Thought Shares