Free Hybrid Lecture
Speakers:
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
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 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.
Copies of The Tobacco Takers will be available for purchase after the program.
Advance registration is recommended for online and in-person attendance.
Free event parking is available with registration at the 52 Oxford Street Garage, starting at 5:00 pm. Register by October 12th, 2026 to receive parking registration instructions.
Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture.
About the Speakers
Diana DiPaolo Loren (PhD, State University of New York at Binghamton) is Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Loren specializes in the colonial northeastern United States, with a focus on the body, health, dress, and adornment. She co-directs the Harvard Yard Archaeology Project, which examines the English and Indigenous student experiences at 17th-century Harvard. Loren is the author of The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America (2010) and The Tobacco Takers: Puritanism, Smoking, Health, and the Archaeology of Bodily Care (2026).
Stephen Silliman (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Silliman specializes in the archaeology and critical heritage studies of indigeneity and colonialism in North America, with a focus on New England and the West Coast. He has a long-term community-engaged archaeology and heritage project with the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation in Connecticut. He is the author of Lost Laborers in Colonial California (2004) and editor of several books, including Engaging Archaeology: 25 Case Studies in Research Practice (2018), Collaborating at the Trowel’s Edge (2008), and Historical Archaeology (2006, with Martin Hall).
