Tobacco pipes (so-called chibouks) typically consisted of a clay bowl in which the tobacco was slowly burned, a long wooden stem, and a separate mouth-piece.

 

A total of 76 pipe bowls and bowl fragments were unearthed at the Agora, 58 of which could be adequately dated. The bowls mostly consist of moulded clay with incised decorations and a finishing slip ranging from white to a reddish-brown colour. Two examples were made of meerschaum.

 

The observed chronology in pipe bowls shows that although tobacco was already consumed in the latter part of the 1600s, it probably did not really become common in Athens before the early 18th century. Further illustrated by the increasing diversity of shapes, colours and styles of chibouk bowls from the early 1700s onwards, a trend which is visible throughout the Ottoman Empire.