Page 17 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

CHAPTER ONE
The Archaeological Exploration of St. Mary’s City
By Henry M. Miller
Maryland began in March of 1634 when about 150 settlers arrived in the Potomac River to plant a new English colony in America. They settled at a
village of the Yaocomico Indians and named it St. Mary’s. For six decades, it served as the capital and chief settlement of the colony, but the con- sequences of a political coup in 1689 led to the government being moved to Annapolis in 1695. Soon afterward, St. Mary’s was mostly abandoned and the above ground traces of the city gradually vanished, though it was not forgotten. Maryland- ers began holding commemorative events at the site in the mid-1800s and the first archaeological exploration of 17th-century Maryland sites oc- curred at St. Mary’s in the 1930s. But finding this long-lost city and understanding it in the context of the young colony and broader Colonial Ameri- ca did not begin in earnest until 1966. In that year, the state founded an organization to preserve, study and interpret the site for the benefit of the public. This initiated the first major program of historical archaeology research in the state that has now continued for half a century. This chap- ter summarizes a few of the major archaeological discoveries over those decades and examines how new evidence and clues were collected and are be- ing used to help solve the mystery of Maryland’s first city.
Historical Beginnings
Maryland was an integral part of the expansion of European peoples throughout the world which began in earnest in the 16th century. England was slow to engage in this large-scale movement, with its initial efforts in Ireland and its first suc- cessful colony in America at Jamestown in 1607. This was followed by Plymouth in 1620 and Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Maryland became the fourth successful colony in what is now the United States but it differed from the others.
Due to a charter granted by King Charles I, it was owned not by a company or organization but by a single individual — Cecil Calvert, the Lord Baltimore.
figure 1
Cecil Calvert,
the Second Lord Baltimore, ca. 1657.
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