Platform Pipe

A platform pipe is a stone smoking pipe with a flat or gently curved base, the platform, and a bowl rising from the middle of its upper surface. One end of the platform is drilled lengthwise to meet the bowl and served as the mouthpiece, and the platform extends beyond the bowl at both ends. Most are 75–100 mm long. The bowl may be plain or carved as an animal or bird (Pickard 2008; Farnsworth et al. 2021; McGuire 1899).

Pipes were pecked, ground and polished from fine-grained pipestone and drilled for the bowl and stem. Illinois pipes are mostly Sterling pipestone, the rest local sedimentary stone or imported catlinite and serpentine; Ohio pipes include local pipestone and limestone and also Illinois flint clay and Minnesota catlinite (Farnsworth et al. 2021; Emerson et al. 2013). Preforms show they were made in villages, and broken pipes were repaired (Farnsworth et al. 2021).

Platform pipes were personal possessions that were also gathered into large ceremonial deposits: more than 200 broken pipes under a burned structure at Mound City and a cache of 136 at Tremper Mound, Ohio (Lepper 2011; Pickard 2008). The key trait is a flat platform base with the bowl rising from its center and the stem hole drilled through one end.

Length mostly 75–100 mm (3–4 in, Pickard 2008, converted from inches).

Ohio and Illinois Hopewell areas (423 pipes from 200 Illinois sites), with examples across the Midwest and Ohio Valley, including Kentucky (Farnsworth et al. 2021; Applegate 2008).

The stem hole runs through the base itself, and the base usually extends on both sides of the bowl. Elbow pipes have a short socket for a separate stem meeting the bowl at an angle; tubular pipes have no separate bowl. Naming trap: McGuire's (1899) "monitor pipe" is a different thin-bowled steatite form that he thought was made with metal tools; he covers Hopewell pipes as "mound pipes", though "monitor pipe" is now widely used for the Hopewell form. Split-base and curved-base pipes are early or regional variants, and in Illinois only about 2% of burials had pipes (Farnsworth et al. 2021). Mineral sourcing showed that most Tremper pipes are Illinois flint clay or catlinite rather than Ohio stone (Emerson et al. 2013; University of Illinois 2012).