Follow the link at the bottom of this post for a terrific summary of the last six years of research and fieldwork at Eutaw Farm in Herring Run Park from the great team at Baltimore Heritage! Check out the video, and then explore our website for even more details about the site and the history… Continue reading Five-Minute History of Eutaw Farm
We had a cool find at the Eutaw site while doing some drone photography today (more on that later)! While walking the ca. 1760 mill tailrace, Jason came across this interesting ceramic, brought to the surface by tree roots and rain. It’s a tiny piece of a medallion from a Westerwald jug! Terminology clarification: I’m… Continue reading Small Finds, Big Stories: Westerwald Jug
We just wrapped up another season of fieldwork at the Eutaw Manor House, and as usual, we were struck by the Last Day Curse: the uncanny phenomenon that causes us to find the most puzzling and intriguing things at the absolute last possible minute of a dig. Earlier this week, as we were digging in… Continue reading Small Finds, Big Stories: The Last Day Curse
Most artifacts recovered from a site are easy to identify. Broken ceramics that were once part of a serving dish or tea cup, shards of olive-colored glass that were parts of a wine bottle, nails that held down the floorboards of a house that has vanished from the landscape. These artifacts are ubiquitous on historical… Continue reading Small Finds, Big Stories: House Bell
Sometimes it’s amazing what you can learn from a single artifact. This wine bottle seal, the only one we’ve recovered so far from the Eutaw Manor House, is an outstanding example of just how much everyday items can reveal about the people who owned them. But first, what even IS a wine bottle seal? The… Continue reading Small Finds, Big Stories: Wine Bottle Seal
Did you know that the woman who invented (or at least popularized) potato chips was from Northeast Baltimore? And that she was born at Eutaw? A fortuitous note from Mark Herlong, a researcher in Washington, DC, has led us to some major breakthroughs in our research into the enslaved people who lived at Eutaw, starting… Continue reading Emeline Jones
Saturday, August 6, 2016: Intern Blog Post: Saturday morning I arrived at The Natural History Society of Maryland to continue the cataloging process, while our volunteers worked to uncover and categorize The Herring Run artifacts. In identifying material artifacts, we as archaeologists are able to assess their practical and functional purposes, as well as a… Continue reading Lab Notes: August 6, 2016
We’ve continued working on both the Eutaw manor house and the earlier part of the site over the last two days, and we’ve learned a great deal in a very short period of time. In the manor house, we discovered a mysterious pit near the southwest corner of the foundation that contained two complete wine… Continue reading Field Notes: Days Six and Seven
Today we passed the halfway point of the 2016 Field Season, and the amazing discoveries continue. Building on the success from yesterday, we continued to explore the location of the earliest European occupation of the site. We opened several more test units, and while we have not yet discovered any foundations or structural remains of… Continue reading Field Notes: Day Five
Today was a very exciting day! We identified a new architectural feature near the house at Eutaw Farm – a possible gravel pathway – which may help us answer one of our more pressing questions: which way did the house face? In the Peale painting of William Smith and his grandson, the house appears to… Continue reading Field Notes: Day Four
The Herring Run Archaeology Project 