A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture (www.chesapeakearchaeology.org)

• About the Project
• Site Summaries
  • Sandys
  • Carter’s Grove CG8
  • Reverend Buck
  • Rich Neck Plantation
  • Jordan’s Journey
  • Old Chapel Field
  • Clifts Plantation
  • Camden
  • Posey
  • Mattapany
  • Compton
  • Patuxent Point
  • King’s Reach
  • Chaney’s Hills
  • Chalkley
  • Burle's Town Land
  • Homewood's Lot
  • Bennett’s Point
• Map
• Interpretations and Papers
• Database
• Downloads
• Technical Data

Credits

The project, “A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture,” was generously funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) (RZ-20896-02) and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. In addition, project members acknowledge the extensive support provided by participating institutions, including the Anne Arundel County Office of Planning and Code Enforcement, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, George Washington’s Fredericksburg Foundation, Historic Mount Vernon, and the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities' Jamestown Rediscovery Project also contributed substantially to the project.

We are especially indebted to project consultants Marley R. Brown III, Cary Carson, Edward E. Chaney, John C. Coombs, Andrew Edwards, Keith Egloff, William Kelso, Philip Levy, and Fraser D. Neiman. These consultants vetted our efforts with enthusiasm and strengthened our interpretations.

Elizabeth Arndt, our program officer at the Division of Collaborative Research at NEH, deserves special mention for her interest and support with the project. In that same vein, Kathleen Kilpatrick, State Historic Preservation Officer and Director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, deserves special acknowledgment for recognizing the value of research across state lines. Kyle Rambo of the Naval Air Station Patuxent River and Jeffrey Bossart of the Naval Support Facility Indian Head also deserve thanks for allowing the collections and reports under their control to be used in this project.

We also thank Deanna Beacham of the Virginia Council of Indians for commenting on a draft version of this web page. Similarly, Dee DeRoche of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources also provided editorial comments.

C. Jane Cox, Andy Edwards, Eric Frere, David Gadsby, David Givens, Fraser Neiman, Bill Pittman, Sharon Raftery, and Nicole Snyder played important roles in the generation of databases for the project. Little would have been accomplished without their assistance and attention to detail.

Cary Carson, Edward Chappell, Willie Graham, Carl Lounsbury, and Donna Ware joined us for several meetings to re-examine the architectural patterns at a number of sites, and their input dramatically changed earlier interpretations regarding architectural space and its use.

Project manager Catherine L. Alston also deserves special recognition. Her expertise with computer programs, including Microsoft Excel and Access, Surfer, and Re:discovery, was critical to the project, not to mention her can-do attitude. It is hard to imagine the project's completion without Catherine's leadership. Travis Shaw, project assistant, did the lion’s share of work standardizing the databases.

Heather Harvey, staff archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg, kindly lent the project her wonderful artistic talents by designing the home page, creating several of the maps including the overall site location map, and helping to design and create the artifact galleries. We are grateful also to the various institutions for permission to use artifact and field images from the sites.

Other project staff include Gregory J. Brown, Edward E. Chaney, Julia A. King, Al Luckenbach, David F. Muraca, and Dennis J. Pogue. Greg Brown took the lead on developing the project web site, paying close attention to navigation and user-friendliness. Ed Chaney worked closely on the southern Maryland sites and the two Indian sites. Julie King coordinated the larger project. Al Luckenbach worked with the upper Chesapeake sites from Anne Arundel County. Dave Muraca coordinated many of the Virginia site analyses. Dennis Pogue developed the context for interpreting living standards and for re-examining King’s Reach.