Page 117 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

CHAPTER FOUR
Charles Town: The Anatomy of a Public Place in Early Tidewater Maryland
By Michael T. Lucas
Archaeologists, historians, and geographers have struggled to define the role of towns with- in the Chesapeake region. A well-worn narrative explains
town development proceeding in fits and starts throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies. Factors, such as readily available land near navigable waterways, and the nature of tobacco cultivation, are repeatedly cited as causes of the “absence of towns” in the early modern Chesa- peake.1 The number of archaeological sites ex- cavated to date demonstrates that the waters are far muddier than the absence of towns narrative would suggest. The problem lies in definitions. The colonial capitals of Williamsburg, Annapolis, and St. Mary’s City (Miller this volume) are easily understood as towns. Even smaller trade centers and county courthouse sites such as Oxford and Cambridge on Maryland’s eastern shore, or Up- per Marlboro and London Town (Luckenbach this volume) could be easily recognized as a town or hamlet by form. But most of the hundreds of places that were designated as towns by the legis- latures in Virginia and Maryland between 1660 and 1710 would scarcely resemble a “town” today.
Charles Town, located in Prince George’s County, on Maryland’s western shore, is but one of those many places that fell somewhere between a plantation landing and a colonial capital. Sixteen years of archaeological and archival research at the site of Charles Town has yielded a wealth of infor- mation about how one of these small public places functioned. Charles Town was a courthouse town and, as such, its form and function were mediated through the movement from courthouse to ordi- nary and back.
This chapter presents a summary and inter- pretation of the excavations conducted at Charles Town from 1996 to 2012 by the Maryland-
National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC), Archaeology Program.2 Charles Town’s development was a product of local, re- gional, and intercolonial processes as understood through archaeological and primary documentary research. At the widest angle, Charles Town was part of the Atlantic world of trade that encom- passed Europe, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the Americas. At first glance Charles Town, like so many places along the Atlantic littoral, was nearly invisible in this complicated world of entangled trade relations. But when local historical and archaeological contexts are examined, a clear picture of Charles Town’s place in this world emerges.
Charles Town, Mount Calvert, and the
Atlantic World: Questions and Evidence
The archaeological remnants of Charles Town are located along the Patuxent River in eastern Prince George’s County, Maryland. At least 50 acres of this archaeological site are located within the boundaries of Mount Calvert Historical and Archaeological Park. Mount Calvert was pur- chased by the M-NCPPC in 1995 and is adminis- tered as a public park. A portion of Charles Town is located on private property beyond the current park boundaries. Summer archaeological excava- tions by M-NCPPC archaeologists within the park boundaries have yielded hundreds of thousands of artifacts and identified thousands of historic and prehistoric features dating from the early Archa- ic period (approximately 8500 years ago) to the early twentieth century. The interpretations here focus on those excavations that revealed significant information about the development of Charles Town.
Rigorous archaeological scholarship begins with a research design structured around compelling
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