Details are in the dirt: Archaeologists uncover Maryland’s indigenous and settler history layer by layer

Katherine Sterner and her students dig up a small pile of dirt every 15 meters and sift. The survey of Herring Run Park eventually strikes a promisingly dense patch of rocks, perhaps pieces of tools or weapons, so the team excavates a full square meter.

In stained soil, Sterner spots post molds, signs of a wooden structure from hundreds or maybe even thousands of years ago.

“We have a semicircular line of three posts,” Sterner said. “We dig down through the darker upper layer of soil to get down to the lighter colored layer of soil. If you dig down to that, and there are still darker color stains, that means somebody else has also dug down there.”

From the coastline to Appalachia, archaeology in Maryland uncovers sites that illuminate a still-murky picture of the land’s indigenous and European settler past. Academic and volunteer excavations, such as Sterner’s project through Towson University’s Baltimore Community Archaeology Lab, are relatively rare, as the vast majority of digs are mandated by federal and local legislation for new development. Meanwhile, the ancestors of the land’s original inhabitants don’t always view the destructive science as worthwhile.

“Archaeology has always been a love-hate relationship with me. At any moment you could be digging one of my relatives,” said Rico Newman, who traces his family to what is now the Chesapeake Bay and the St. Mary’s River and retired from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in 2009.

“I’ve gotten past that and become part of Archaeology Society of Maryland. It’s validation. We weren’t in the census, so these artifacts are like our records.”

In recent years, Herring Run Park has been home to volunteer digs through the Herring Run Archaeology Project, which has excavated a house belonging to 17th century slave owners as well as other indigenous sites.

“Back in 2021, we excavated a site that included 11,000 years of human history in one site,” said Lisa Kraus, co-founder of the Herring Run Archaeology Project and an archaeologist for the Maryland State Highway Administration.

The most recent survey of the park from October to December in Northeast Baltimore, conducted by Sterner, an assistant professor at Towson University and director of The Baltimore Community Archaeology Lab, two paid student researchers and volunteers, will be submitted into the state’s database, which is not accessible to the public. Sterner said she could analyze radio carbon of wood remains to tell when the tree died but would prefer to uncover bone or organic residue on pottery. She also said she hopes to come back in the summer to look for more artifacts that can be identified and dated by matching them to a diagnostic database of artifacts that have been uncovered and dated elsewhere.

“I know too much about dirt,” Fidel Green, one of the project’s student researchers said while sifting earth. “There is the nerdy side of history and getting to know what happened here, and then we also all have a little caveman brain that makes it fun to go out and dig holes and find rocks that were smashed into other rocks.”

Maryland digs

In Maryland and across the country, most archaeological surveys are spurred by federal and state laws that require projects funded with public money to consider cultural resources. Maryland Department of Planning Chief Archaeologist Matt McKnight said Anne Arundel County and Annapolis have stricter archaeology requirements in their building codes, leading to more projects. Since the state started recording data in 1969, there have been 133 archaeological sites recorded in Annapolis and 1,759 sites in Anne Arundel County compared with 218 in Baltimore City and 626 in Baltimore County.

“Archaeology is a destructive science, so we are destroying sites as we excavate them. We maintain accurate and very detailed records is the main way we ensure things are done correctly and scientifically. We can’t reconstruct a site but can reconstruct what happened at a site,” McKnight said. “Maryland specifically, there is basically every kind of archaeology you would want to do in Maryland.”

Carbon dating doesn’t work on rocks, so archaeologists digging up stone tools or ceramics rely on databases and layered soil to determine the age of artifacts.

“Styles changed over time. That is as true for cars as it is for pottery as it is for stone tools, and archaeologists for many many, many years have developed elaborate sequences,” McKnight said. “Stratified sites with multiple soil layers can go back in time, in sites that are really well preserved stacked up over time.”

Zac Singer, an archaeologist with the state, said that along the Chesapeake Bay, oyster roasting pits have left behind enough matter to be carbon-dated. “This is not so much the search for interesting objects to put into a museum. What archaeology is really more akin to is crime scene investigation. It’s more trying to reconstruct past human behavior,” Singer said.

McKnight said improvements in radar technology and accessibility over the past five years have made field operations more efficient.

“Radar allows us to do a small survey project within two to three days. Excavation is very time-consuming. If we know an area of interest, we can go out with remote sensing that allows us to make the most of our time being out in the field.”

Indigenous perspective

Newman traces his ancestry not to tribes, but specific places. His dad’s family was from Potopaco, which settlers turned into Port Tobacco, and his mom was from Chaptico.

“We were pushed away from our homelands. We didn’t have cemeteries. Early on I wasn’t enamored with archaeology and archaeologists because I would explain to them I know where my parents are buried, but I don’t know where their parents are buried,” Newman said.

Newman was on the Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs from 2002 to 2009 and said he unsuccessfully lobbied to make the state’s database of archaeological sites public. He also has unsuccessfully fought a law that allows property owners to keep artifacts found on their land.

“They can blank out that part to tell you exactly where the site is. You don’t have to give me the pinpoint location, but you can give me the information part of the narrative part of the story,” Newman said.

In the 1980s, Newman said he passed on an oral history from his grandmother to archaeologists from St. Mary’s College of Maryland to help them locate a former Chaptico reservation where his mom’s family lived until settlers forced them away.

Dennis Seymour, chair of the Baltimore American Indian Center Museum, said his father was from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. He said archaeology around Baltimore can help identify who lived in the area before colonization and who was trading or passing through.

“It’s reported John Smith encountered well over 40 tribes on the Chesapeake Bay. I think the value of the archaeology is it can better establish the tribes that truly did inhabit the Baltimore area before first contact or shortly thereafter,” Seymour said. “What is tricky about the archaeology is there was so much trade, It’s confusing. Locally we’ve found artifacts that would be clearly from as far away as Ohio. There was a nomadic trend to come to the Chesapeake Bay in the summertime.”