South Field Sites

Last week Pete finished mapping all of the artifacts that we recovered in the field immediately north of Warehouse Landing Point (see below). As we noted in previous postings, this field yielded two historic sites, both pre-Revolutionary War and probably pre-Port Tobacco (late 17th/early 18th centuries; Chandler's Town). Those two sites are encircled in red towards the bottom of the map.

Map of South Field artifact locations. The Colonial Period sites are encircled in red, the prehistoric sites in blue.

We also identified at least four prehistoric sites (encircled in blue). The three southernmost are extensive and likely represent a series of repeated occupations, possibly seasonally with the same group or related groups returning to the site each year as part of a seasonal round.

We also found a scatter of late historic artifacts (whiteware and bottle glass) along the eastern edge of the field. These may be remnants of late 19th-/early 20th-century dwelling sites that were destroyed by road construction.

There is lots more to report on the sites in the south field, but we are still working on it. Pete and Stevenson University intern Kevin McCall are cataloguing the collections and we still have to prepare the contour maps and apply to the Maryland Historical Trust for site numbers. Hopefully all of that will be done by week's end and we can start assembling the report next week. It is during the report writing phase that we 'dig' deeper into the details of each of the sites identified during the field survey and interpret those findings in terms of the general development of Port Tobacco and the river valley.

Jim