Back in late 2014, I received a phone call from a retired school teacher in Mexico City named Tobyanne Berenberg. Her mother was Fredericka Martin and among the possessions she left to Tobyanne were artifacts she had collected while assisting …
We sometimes metaphorically speak of following in our ancestor’s footsteps, but can we find their actual footsteps? That is a question I have long pondered after a surprise find in 1978. In that year we were digging at the Garrett …
Rent is a part of life. Some of us pay monthly rent for a place to live. But land owners also pay a “rent” in the form of property taxes. Think not? If you stop paying property taxes, see how …
If you ask historians what are the most important sources of information about early Maryland, what would they say? First on the list would undoubtedly be the government records of the colony. It is remarkable that so much of the …
The Most Remarkable Rescue of Early Maryland History Read more »
Over the many years archaeologists have explored St. Mary’s City, thousands of intrusions into the ground have been revealed. We call them features and with “dirt reading” experience, most can be identified as post holes, fence ditches, tree roots or …
Archaeologists go to great lengths to record as they dig. This is because accurate data about when and where are key to answering the how and why. In this post, I would like to focus upon the value of where. …
Archaeologists at St. Mary’s City frequently recover fragments of brown clay tobacco pipes believed to have been made by indigenous people who lived along the Potomac River. Thousands of these have been found over the past 50 years of digging, …
We take glass windows for granted but in 17th-century Maryland, only wealthier colonists could afford them. For many, window covers were cloth, oiled paper, or just shutters. And no one had screens to keep the mosquitoes out. Archaeology at St. …
The Thames River holds a remarkable record of human life spanning thousands of years. Every day, some of this record is newly revealed by the action of tides. I had the very good fortune of experiencing the thrill of mudlarking …
One of the least expected artfacts discovered during the archaeology at St. Mary’s City is a small medallion bearing the image of the great Swedish King Gustavas Adolphus. Archaeologists recovered it at the Van Sweringen site which began as the …
