Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Millennia of human occupation have left dramatic and diverse traces buried beneath the soils of southern Maryland. At Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC), a museum of living history located at the site of Maryland’s first colonial capital, archaeology has led the way in publicly interpreting the lives of the area’s inhabitants. In this session, staff share discoveries from the museum’s three current excavation projects (the sites of St. Mary’s Fort, the Leonard Calvert House, and Chancellor’s Point), along with ongoing work on the institution’s vast collections and updates on major exhibit projects. This current research builds on decades of foundational historical archaeology while offering new insights on early hypotheses, breaking ground at new sites, and pointing the museum towards a broader, more community-driven approach to Maryland history.

Other Keywords
Historical • Fort • Colonial • Architecture • Erosion • Reconstruction • Burials • Fence Lines • Chapel • Exhibit

Geographic Keywords
Chesapeake

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • All That Once Glittered: Metallic Thread from the St. Mary’s Fort (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only J. H. Ogborne.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Multiple fragments of tangled metallic threads and a complete woven button were found during the 2023 excavation season in a St. Mary’s Fort cellar feature at Historic St. Mary’s City. These discarded threads once adorned garments that communicated the social and economic status of the wearer,...

  • Completing the Saga of the 1660s Chapel Exhibit at St. Mary’s City. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Henry M. Miller.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Early Maryland’s first brick building was a Catholic chapel constructed in the 1660s, closed due to religious bigotry in 1704, and demolished a decade later. Archaeologists relocated the site in 1983 and major investigations extended from 1988 to 1996. Following analysis and extensive architectural...

  • Death at St. Mary's Fort: Archaeology of an Early Burial (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine M. Davis. Jade S. Burch. Ruth M. Mitchell. Henry M. Miller.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeological findings at the 1634 St. Mary’s Fort provide evidence for one of the earliest colonial burials in Maryland. Discovered during testing in 1992, this burial remained unexcavated until 2023 when it was investigated in collaboration with Smithsonian forensic scientists. Consultation was...

  • Drawing The Line: A Reevaluation Of Northeastern Fence Lines On The Leonard Calvert House Site (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Carley J Arrowood. Sabrina L Wandres. Dakota L Kalavoda.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Leonard Calvert House (ca.1630s/1640s - ca.1710) served originally as the home of Maryland’s first governor and was later converted into the colony’s first statehouse and public ordinary. The varying functions and occupants of this structure are reflected in its complex yardscape. Here, seven...

  • Old Dog, New Tricks: How Recent Mitigation Efforts Are Building Upon 40+ Years Of Research At The Leonard Calvert House (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris L Coogan.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In March of 2023, excavations began on a new capital project aimed at recovering and analyzing archaeological materials located at the Leonard Calvert House Site in preparation for the reconstruction of the large structure in the heart of Historic St. Mary’s City’s Town Center. This project, which...

  • "A Parcell of Land… Commonly Knowne and Called Chancellor’s Point": Burial Excavations on an Eroding Colonial Site. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth M Mitchell. Brandon L Herrmann.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Two burials of individuals of African descent (ca. 1680-1730s) were recently excavated at Chancellor’s Point in St. Mary’s City, Maryland. These two individuals were interred on an earlier domestic site dating to 1639 – ca. 1680. Archaeological work from previous decades suggests that blacksmithing...

  • Pointing Towards a More Complete Narrative: An Analysis of Indigenous Artifacts at the Leonard Calvert House, Historic St. Mary’s City (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Chrissy A Perl. Erin N Crawford.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. More than twenty seasons of excavations at the Leonard Calvert House site have yielded artifacts spanning vast periods of time both before and after the gubernatorial occupation that lends the site its name. The land of Historic St. Mary’s City was long occupied by the indigenous groups of Maryland...

  • A Tale Of Two Bastions: A Comparative Analysis Of The West And North Corner Bastions Of St. Mary’s Fort (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica E Edwards.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bastions, Buttons, and Burials: Recent Research at Historic St. Mary’s City", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. “We have seated ourselves, within one half mile of the river, within a pallizado of one hundred and twentie yarde square, with four flankes,..'' These were the words written by Governor Leonard Calvert to friend and financier Sir Richard Lechford in May of 1634. With the discovery of the St. Mary’s...