The Value of Where
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. …
Category: Dig Deeper
A Bird and Person on a Pipe
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, …
Strange Windows
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. …
Mudlarking for Science: Part 2
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 …
Mystery of the Swedish King
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 …
Mudlarking for Science: Part 1
Archaeological research needs type collections of known artifacts to help identify the unknown ones. This is true for skeletons, tobacco pipes, and ceramics. HSMC has developed some of these but lacks others. In 2016, an opportunity arose to make an …
A Rare Letter
Few letters from 17th-century Maryland survive and nearly all of these are from elite men. But detective work by English historian Ruth Crook in 2014 discovered a previously unknown letter in a London Archive. It was written by Ann Trueman, …