The Tobacco Takers: Puritans, Pipes and Bodily Care

Geological Lecture Hall
24 Oxford St.
Cambridge
Tue., Oct. 13, 2026, 6 – 7 p.m.



Indigenous to the Americas and cultivated by Native peoples for thousands of years, tobacco was introduced to Europeans in the 16th century, and by the early 17th century, it had spread across the globe. In Puritan New England, religious leaders condemned tobacco as sinful while early practitioners used it as medicine. Clay tobacco pipes commonly found at 17th-century archaeological sites in Massachusetts reveal widespread use despite strict social and religious restrictions. Drawing from her new book, The Tobacco Takers: Puritanism, Smoking, Health, and the Archaeology of Bodily Care (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026), Diana DiPaolo Loren, deputy director for curatorial affairs and senior curator at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, will share archaeological, archival, and visual evidence that recasts tobacco and tobacco pipes as tools of bodily care for both physical and metaphysical ailments. The program will include a conversation with archaeologist Stephen W. Silliman.

Online Location: harvard.zoom.us…
Gazette Classification: Community, Lecture, Science, Social Sciences
Organization/Sponsor: Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
Speaker(s): Diana DiPaolo Loren, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Stephen W. Silliman, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston
Cost: Free
Ticket Web Link: forms.cloud.microsoft…
Harvard Key Required: No
More info: hmsc.harvard.edu…