A Look at Indigenous Ceramic Vessels in the Historic St. Mary’s City Collections

Chrissy Perl and Erin Crawford, Historic St. Mary's City

Historic St. Mary's City (HSMC) is a living history museum and National Historic Landmark located in Southern Maryland. St. Mary's City was the first English settlement in what is now Maryland and served as the colonial capital until AD 1695. HSMC strives to represent the history of all the people that once lived across its landscape. This includes 9,000 years of human activity that is represented in the museum's collection of about 6.5 million artifacts and counting.

The collection contains a substantial amount of indigenous materials such as ceramics and lithics. These artifacts attest to the indigenous occupation of this area beginning in the Early Archaic Period (9500- 7000 BCE). Ceramics were introduced to the material record in the Woodland Period (1000 BCE- 1600 CE) and indicate a continual occupation before and after colonial contact. Current ceramic evidence points to major occupations in the Early Woodland (1000 BCE- 50 CE) and the Late Woodland (950- 1600 CE) periods. The following indigenous ceramic vessels represent unique examples of post-use deposition, ware types, and decorative styles in our collections.

Accokeek Ware Vessel

Accokeek ware is a common example of Early Woodland ceramics which typically consists of a crushed quartz temper and cord-impressed surface treatment. Archaeologists excavating the Leonard Calvert House Site, located in the center of the colonial capital, uncovered 240 sherds of an Accokeek ware vessel in the corner of a single 5'x5' unit. The sherds were closely clustered together and showed direct mends while in situ. These mends were further verified in the lab and appear to be a portion of a singular vessel broken by environmental effects (roots, insects, animals, etc.) post deposition. The concentration of so many mending sherds in one small area suggests that much of the original pot was discarded as one piece before further breakage. Other concentrations of Accokeek ware sherds have been found

dispersed across our landscape and may represent multiple Early Woodland settlements or one sustained occupation at what is now HSMC. Examining both broad landscape spatial distributions and highly concentrated deposits can show us the extent to which people utilized the landscape as well as singular disposal events.

Figure 1. Mending Accokeek Ware sherds from the Leonard Calvert House Site excavations at Historic St. Mary's City.

Rappahonnock Fabric-Impressed Vessel

The large quantities of shell- tempered indigenous ceramics in the collection reflect increasing population density and a shift to more sedentary settlement patterns practiced by indigenous peoples in the Late Woodland period. One type of shell tempered ceramic frequently excavated at HSMC is Rappahannock fabric-impressed. In 2014, a Rappahannock vessel was found at a site near the Leonard Calvert House Site and exhibits a well-defined fabric impressed surface treatment. These sherds were found in close proximity to each other and several of them mend together. Others exhibit identical characteristics, indicating they are all originally from the same vessel.

Figure 2. Examples of Late Woodland Rappahannock.

Rappahannock Incised Vessel

As ceramic production techniques changed, decoration and motif preferences also shifted and by the Late Woodland incising became the favored form of decoration. An example of this technique is seen in a group of Rappahannock sherds with an incised herringbone motif found in multiple contexts in the current Leonard Calvert House Site excavations. Despite the

lack of mends, these sherds have nearly identical fabric and decorative patterns, meaning they are most likely from the same original vessel. While they are concentrated at the Leonard Calvert House Site, they are dispersed across several excavation units. This dispersal is likely the result of later site occupations, including a colonial government building, a temporary fortification, an ordinary, and a 19th-century mansion house. All of these later occupations impacted the complex archaeological stratigraphy we observe today.

Figure 3. Similar Rappahannock Incised sherds with a notable herringbone pattern from the Leonard Calvert House Site.

These three examples of Native ceramic vessels are a small assemblage of artifacts that provides HSMC archaeologists insight into the lives of the past indigenous communities that lived in southern Maryland. Using a variety of analytical methods, such as crossmending and vessel analysis, these three vessels are a window into how we as archaeologists study ceramics in an effort to understand how people in the past made, decorated, and used essential daily objects. The relationship between artifacts and the archaeological contexts in which they are found also aids our broader understanding of how people in the past utilized the landscapes they inhabited and the resources found there. The indigenous narrative continues to expand as excavations continue across the HSMC landscape.