A rich body of thought—developed by archaeologists and others—points the way toward dynamic understandings of who humans are, yet archaeology struggles to be more than a handmaiden. Arguably, the problem is one of method rather than theory: what counts as data, how we archaeologists categorize things, and what our problems are. This paper examines labor relations in the early Virginia colony via locally made clay tobacco pipes. These artifacts, often treated as emblems of ethnic identity, are here used to understand a society in the process of transforming its pluralities into the categories that we take for granted.