In the Land of Pleasant Living: Archaeology and its Role in 21st-Century Baltimore

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren E Schiszik.

This paper will cover the rise, fall, and current rise of archaeology in Baltimore. "Charm City" serves as a case-study to explore the political, social, and temporal factors that alter the levels of archaeological stewardship at the local goverment level. The establishment of the Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology in 1983 marked Baltimore as a forerunner in urban public archaeology. This innovative program led excavations that engaged thousands of people until it closed due to city-wide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Moyer.

Archaeology took place at Mount Clare, a former plantation the remnants of which sit in Carroll Park in southwestern Baltimore, beginning in the 1970s. It not only shaped the story told at the site, but influenced many archaeologists' careers. In 2014, Baltimore City reclaimed the archaeological collection. This historic moment provides archaeologists with an opportunity to reflect on their time with the Mount Clare sites and collections. It is also a moment to propose new ways of using the old...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily R Walter. Greg Katz.

When the British threatened Baltimore in 1814, the citizens did not panic or surrender. Instead, with the help of militia from all over Maryland and beyond, they rushed to reinforce their city’s defenses with earthworks and whatever artillery could be scavenged. The anchor of the defense was high ground known as Hampstead Hill. While most of the city’s defenses have disappeared under its expanding neighborhoods, a section on Hampstead Hill survived because it was preserved in what became...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Fracchia.

Like the strikes of the late nineteenth century, especially the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, tensions arising from chronic inequality and marginalization once again led to protests and demonstrations in Baltimore in April 2015.  Areas of Baltimore remain alienated along racial and class lines that serve a capitalist process driven by the maximization of profit.  This paper examines how this same process resulted in the stratification of immigrant and African American communities in Baltimore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Kraus. Jason Shellenhamer.

The Herring Run Archaeology Project is a low-cost, community-based archaeology program that runs almost entirely through volunteer efforts. This paper will present the results of our first year of research and fieldwork, the successes and failures of the project, and the need for new models for public archaeology in Baltimore City. We'll also discuss the ways in which the seeds of the modern neighborhoods that surround Herring Run Park were planted in its earliest European- and African-American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Johns W. Hopkins.

To celebrate the bicentennial of the War of 1812, Baltimore Heritage in 2014 undertook an archeology project to document the defensive works erected to repel the British invasion in what is today a well used public park, and to engage park users, school kids, and nearby residents about the history of the battlefield-turned-park. The neighborhoods surrounding the project site are dense and racially diverse: roughly a third each of African American, Hispanic, and Caucasion. The year-long...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Chidester. David Gadsby.

The recent uprising in West Baltimore took place less than two miles from the neighborhood of Hampden, but, with a few notable exceptions, it made little impact there.  Writers and historians have long understood the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden to be culturally, geographically, and racially  isolated from the city in which it is embedded.  Archaeological investigations performed there have helped to illustrate how class and power relationships changed over time, ultimately reinforcing that...