The collection of almost 1,000 clay pipes from the quarantine port of Pomegues provides a unique insight into pipe production and use throughout the Mediterranean and further afield. The author's exhaustive study makes a significant contribution to knowledge both of pipe production and circulation in a number of different ways. Although these have already been recognised and published from a range of sites throughout the Mediterranean basin, the Pomegues collection, arriving off Marseilles on ships from many ports of origin, is by far the most extensive and varied yet collected. This study establishes a logical nomenclature for the formal and technical variables that can be observed on these pipes."