Page 83 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

source of labor still prohibitively expensive for most Maryland planters well into the 17th centu- ry. And at least one historian believes that Thom- as Notley, who had come to Maryland by way of Barbados, was brought to the colony by the Calverts in part to help develop the slave trade.50
As the archaeological evidence from the earlier plantation sites revealed, colonists used architecture and consumer goods to mark their social standing from the first days of settlement. Such markers were critical in a land where there was often little to no prior acquaintance between neighbors. Further, the need for labor brought people of different social classes, ethnicities, and races together and material markers helped to shape how this mix of people should interact. The segregation of service areas, one way to mark so- cial difference based on one’s labor, was already underway in England when Maryland was first settled. This process was slowed, but not halted by the colony’s frontier conditions. By the early 1650s, most Maryland colonists were beginning to think better of investing heavily in architecture, choosing instead to invest in plantation labor and in consumer goods: the former to generate wealth and the latter to assert their English identity in a strange new world. By the 1660s, with the ex- ception of the Calverts and their cronies, most planters were building earthfast variations on the Virginia house. A number of these plantations survive in the archaeological record although only a few have been tested to date.
The key to figure 1 lists the sites examined in this section of the chapter. Two of the sites, St. Clement’s Manor and the Stevens plantation, were (as noted) previously occupied before 1660. But occupation continued until 1672 and ca. 1685, respectively. The remaining seven sites were all occupied after ca. 1660 with the latest, King’s Reach, first occupied ca. 1690. The dwellings at only three of the ten sites listed in table 1 have been fully exposed, including the previously dis- cussed Stevens plantation (see figure 10), Patuxent Point (figure 25), and King’s Reach (figure 26). All three structures were of earthfast construction with minimal brick incorporated into their ar- chitecture. Patuxent Point, thought to have been built ca. 1658 (or a decade later than the Stevens plantation), measured 20 by 40 ft, or 800 square ft in ground floor area with a wooden floor, glazed windows, and a single end chimney of wood and clay. The building was probably divided into a hall and parlor configuration with a direct entry into
figure 25
Plan of Patuxent Point homelot (18CV271).
figure 26
Plan of King’s Reach homelot (18CV83).
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IMAGE BY SCOTT STRICKLAND IMAGE BY SCOTT STRICKLAND