The Clay Pipes of Valongo Wharf, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Building and Materializing New Communities in a New World

This chapter analyses and discusses a collection of clay pipes recovered from archaeological excavations at the Valongo Wharf, Rio de Janeiro. We examine the variety of their decorative motifs in relation to the ethnic and cultural diversity of enslaved people who arrived at the site over the course of the nineteenth century. Mixing aesthetic and ethnic references from different origins in Africa with others seen immediately around them, belonging to Europeans, these hybrid expressions circulated intensely among the enslaved populations uprooted, dispersed and disaggregated. We argue that the decoration of these pipes made them powerful social agents, seducing and captivating the people who saw them, and that their power stimulated a process of intensive replication. Captives used them to promote a sense of social cohesion, create new bonds and construct new diasporic identities, which made them a source of strength and survival.