Summer 2022 Internship Information

For the summer of 2022, The Lost Towns Project and Anne Arundel County Cultural Resources Section are offering four internship positions: two paid positions and two positions for college credit. Applications are due April 1st, 2022. Please click on the links below for full internship descriptions and more information.

Internship Descriptions:

Hammond Plantation Archaeology: One Internship with Stipend Available

The intern will assist staff working on the MHT Non-Capital Grant Project “Slavery, resistance, and freedom: recording Anne Arundel County’s past”. The goal of this project is to create a more inclusive history by researching, documenting, and sharing the diversity of Black households in nineteenth-century Anne Arundel County, including sites inhabited by both enslaved and free African-Americans, before and after emancipation. The intern will be required to:

  • Assist staff with desk audit of sites as necessary
  • Assist with research on Hammond Plantation, particularly the 19th-century domestic sites already identified on the property 
  • Participate in Phase I and Phase II excavations at the USNA Dairy Farm (the location of Hammond Plantation), in Gambrills, MD
  • Participate in artifact processing (washing, labeling, cataloging, etc.) at the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Laboratory in Edgewater, MD
  • Assist with managing volunteers throughout excavation
  • Contribute to blog and social media posts
  • Write a final report on their activities

See the full listing for this internship here.

Historic Cemetery Documentation: One Internship with Stipend Available

The intern will assist the Cultural Resources Section with updates to the Anne Arundel County Cemetery Database, data creation, completion of inventory forms, and with development of a summer public workshop for the County’s Preservation Stewardship Program. This project will enhance and verify existing documentation in the County’s cemetery database, as well as develop additional databases or resources for research analysis. The intern will be required to:

  • Assist staff with desk audit of the existing cemetery database, which includes georeferencing  existing maps with cemetery information to build a spatial database for cross-reference
  • Assist with developing, coordinating, and leading a single 2-hour public workshop on the history, significance, and preservation needs of the Hammond Plantation Cemetery at the USNA Dairy Farm
  • Assist with the completion of historic cemetery inventory forms with statements of historic significance where needed
  • Assist with developing a dataset for transfer to the Maryland Historical Trust for curation of cemetery location data in its statewide repository

See the full listing for this internship here.

Archaeology Field & Laboratory Methods: Two Internships for College Credit

Interns will learn the basics of archaeological field and labwork by participating alongside professional archaeologists and volunteers in excavation, recording, and artifact processing in the field and lab. The intern will be required to:

  • Participate in artifact processing (washing, labeling, cataloging, etc.) at the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Laboratory in Edgewater, MD (approximately 70% of time)
  • Participate in Phase I and Phase II excavations at one or more archaeological sites across Anne Arundel County (approximately 30% of time)
  • Work with other interns and volunteers as needed
  • Contribute to blog and social media posts
  • Write a final report on their activities

See the full listing for this internship here.

Lost Towns Project selected as recipient of SHARP Recovery Grants Fund

The Lost Towns Project is grateful to be selected as one of 91 Maryland nonprofit organizations to receive a $10,000 grant award from Maryland Humanities’ #SHARP Recovery Grants Fund.


These funds are critical for our organization as we recover from the effects of the pandemic to continue our mission to promote the preservation, discovery, study, appreciation, and stewardship of public and privately-owned cultural resources, historic structures, and archaeological sites in Anne Arundel County region.


The Lost Towns team offers archaeology, history, and cultural heritage programs to volunteers, and develops and hosts hands-on Archaeology “Dig Day” field trips for hundreds of students each year. While programs came to halt last year, we are excited for 2022 as we engage students and the public with their local history and cultivate a new generation of stewards for our collective historic resources.


The support provided by the Sustaining Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) Recovery Grants Fund will ensure that our humanities organization can continue to provide opportunities for Maryland’s diverse communities to access and engage with public history, cultural heritage, and civic learning.


Funding for these grants has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and Maryland Humanities as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the NEH Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative.


More information about the SHARP Recovery Grants can be found here.

County Archaeologists Catalog Research Collection; Discover 30 New Sites

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Anne Arundel County archaeologists and volunteers have recently completed a two-year project to catalog the Bob Ogle Collection, a large research collection that was donated to the county by longtime local resident and avocational archaeologist Bob Ogle. With funding support from the Maryland Historical Trust, the team curated 150 boxes of artifacts from Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, and Prince George’s Counties.

Some highlights from the Ogle project:

  • The collection contains 161,982 unique objects from 154 different archaeological sites. 
  • Revisiting the Ogle collection resulted in the identification of 30 new sites that were previously unrecorded by the State; 
  • 82 volunteers contributed 2,673 hours of work on the collection. A big thank you to all our volunteers and interns! 
  • Amelia Chisholm was lead author on the project’s technical report, which topped out at over 500 pages. 
  • Shawn Sharpe personally identified and catalogued an astounding  27,037 projectile points. Sharpe also cataloged over 44,000 unique objects from the Tanyard site in Anne Arundel County, a large site along the South River. The Native American base camp is stratified and has intact prehistoric occupation dating to around 2,000 years ago.
  • Drew Webster and a cohort of summer collegiate interns catalogued over 55,000 colonial-period artifacts from the Swann sites in Calvert County.
  • 108 Paleoindian artifacts were identified in the collection from 28 archaeological sites. 24 of these sites had never had a Paleoindian component identified at them before. These artifacts represent the oldest record of human habitation in Maryland, and date to as early as 13,500 years ago. This finding is a significant contribution to the research of Maryland’s earliest Native Americans.
  • The team also identified 40 projectile points of the Hardaway Dalton, Dalton, and Hardaway Side-Notched types, which date to 10,500 years ago. Only 20 points of these varieties were known across the entire State prior to this research, so this work has tripled the known number of these exceptionally ancient projectile points in Maryland. 
  • The work has the potential for countless avenues for additional research, such as large-scale settlement patterns, lithic raw material preferences, and other comparative studies. Interested researchers, be they professionals or students, should contact [email protected]
Projectile Points in the Ogle Collection

County Executive Announces Oral History Virtual Tour of Civil Rights Era in Anne Arundel County

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New site features more than 50 oral history interviews with residents documenting Civil Rights Era

Annapolis, MD (February 8, 2022) Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman announced the launch of an oral history virtual tour of the Civil Rights Era in Anne Arundel County. The virtual tour, completed by Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Section in partnership with local historians, can be found at www.aacounty.org/civil-rights-era.“Having stayed up way too late the other night watching the interviews on this site, I can tell you that they are captivating, inspiring, and uplifting,” County Executive Steuart Pittman said. “I am so grateful to the men and women who shared their history and the historians who are bringing it to the public and to our students. This is the kind of honest, direct presentation of history that makes us a better community.”

The new site features more than 50 oral history interviews collected from residents across the County, and is presented as a tour of local places, people, and everyday experiences during a time of segregation. It documents spaces of leisure and recreation, where people of color could gather and enjoy solidarity and empowerment; places like stores, ballfields, beaches, juke joints, movie theaters, beauty salons, and barber shops.

“Historic preservation is not only about saving grand old buildings, but about preserving the stories of the people and the places that have profoundly influenced County history,” said C. Jane Cox, Administrator of the County’s Cultural Resources Section in the Office of Planning and Zoning. “Documenting this chapter of local history from the not so distant past helps our Office in its mission to preserve diverse aspects of local history for future generations.”

The project began in 2017 with funding from the National Park Service’s Civil Rights Grants Program. A team of historians from Anne Arundel County in partnership with the non-profit Lost Towns Project, Inc worked with citizens who generously shared memories of what life was like during segregation, and uncovered their compelling stories of injustice, resistance, and sacrifice, perseverance and triumph. Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt) was the lead historian on the project, supported by Dr. John Kille.

“What I love about the Civil Rights Oral History Project: it connects people with their memories and with the way life was during the Civil Rights Era,” lead historian Lyndra Marshall (née Pratt) said. “These stories give a glimpse into the many ways residents engaged in recreation and leisure during segregation. They found creative ways to have fun times with family and friends in spite of being blocked from public spaces or they became owners of social spaces.”

Map of locations highlighted in the virtual tour

The project has also resulted in a ground-breaking partnership between Anne Arundel County and the Maryland State Archives. The Archives has established a dedicated Special Collection where the full length oral history footage and transcriptions are to be housed in perpetuity, and can be found here.

Katara West from the Office of Equity & Accelerated Student Achievement and the Social Studies Office at Anne Arundel County Public Schools lauded the tour as a “valuable resource for learners of all ages. The AACPS Local History Initiative plans to utilize this site to educate students and staff about the stories of perseverance, triumph, and strong community bond of African Americans in Anne Arundel County during the Civil Rights Era and beyond! This site will serve as another valuable tool in building social studies and other curriculum that is inclusive of Anne Arundel County history.”

To view the virtual tour and experience local history through the eyes and stories of those who lived it, visit www.aacounty.org/Civil-Rights-Era.

Lost Towns Project Receives Grant to Study Black Housing

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The Lost Towns is grateful to have been selected as a recipient of an FY 2022 Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grant Awards from the Maryland Historical Trust. Titled “Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom: Recording Anne Arundel County’s Past,” the goal of this project is to create a more inclusive history by researching, documenting, and sharing the diversity of Black households in nineteenth-century Anne Arundel County, including sites inhabited by both enslaved and free African-Americans, before and after emancipation.

This project will undertake a detailed archival and literature review of nineteenth-century Black housing in the Chesapeake. The investigators will create a database of approximately 100 such sites, conduct field visits to approximately 20 sites to assess their condition, create or update Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties site data, and write a summary report to disseminate the findings. Through this study, the project aims to broaden public support for the protection and preservation of Black historical spaces.  

This is a multidisciplinary project that may employ documentation techniques such as remote sensing. In this photo, Lost Towns uses ground penetrating radar to investigate the slave cemetery at Whitehall.