Bringing the Past to the Present, For the Future: Constructing a Database for the Archaeological Collections and Records of Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary

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By Jug Bay Intern Julia Ribblett. This blog post was originally published in Marsh Notes, the newsletter of Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary, and is cross-posted here.

Hidden among the freshwater tidal marshes and forests on the Anne Arundel County side of Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary are 26 documented archaeological sites, encompassing nearly 13,000 years of human activity along the banks of the Patuxent River. Since the county began buying Jug Bay’s current properties in the late 20th century, the Lost Towns Project and the archaeological team under Anne Arundel’s Cultural Resources Section has accumulated thousands of artifacts from the area. Amidst the county’s ongoing project to re-access all the boxes in their storage facilities, Lost Towns and Jug Bay identified a shared need to organize the information on the Sanctuary’s archaeological collections and records in one place.

Working on the Jug Bay collections database at the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Lab in Edgewater, Maryland. Photo credit: Kennedy Wiggins, Lost Towns Project Intern.

For my research, I used Google Sheets to construct a database, an accessible digital tool that stores and retrieves detailed information on all of Anne Arundel County’s artifact collections and records from Jug Bay-area sites. My database opens first to an overview page with links that researchers can use to navigate to a Jug Bay site’s individual page. After gathering feedback through a survey to the Jug Bay community, I divided each site’s page into separate archaeological projects by rows. Each project received a summary, citations for all existing literature and reports, updated information on the number of artifact boxes, and the storage locations of those boxes. I also created an artifact table summarizing the number of diagnostic artifacts in each project’s collection for future researchers who may be interested in certain types of prehistoric or historic objects.

Overall, I realized how much effort is required to maintain an archaeological collection as well as the seriousness of the universal issues of information backlogs and lack of standardization that plague the archaeological profession. Fortunately, protecting and preserving the information about Jug Bay’s archaeological record for the Maryland community through a database is helping to resolve those issues in Anne Arundel County. I hope that future professional and non- professional researchers who are interested in Jug Bay’s archaeological past will find my database accessible and helpful for their work. I also hope that both Jug Bay and the Lost Towns Project will be able to add new data to my research and use my database as a guide for organizing the collections and records of other sites in a similar format.

The county is currently working to publish a link for the public to access the database. You can contact the Cultural Resources Section for more information.

Screenshot of the “overview” page in the Jug Bay collections database. Photo credit: Julia Ribblett.

Intern Spotlight: Nicole Six

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This is the sixth in a series of posts highlighting our awesome summer interns!

“My name is Nicole Six, I have a BA in Archaeology and Ancient History from Durham University in the UK.

“I have a special interest in zooarchaeology so I’ve been identifying and cataloguing faunal remains from the Bob Ogle Collection. The remains date from the 17th century, and are mostly from livestock. I make note of the species, what type of bone, what part of the bone, the approximate age, and any notable features. For example, ‘left proximal femur of a non-adult cow, with butcher marks.’ After I finish this project I’m aiming to start a new project focusing on collections management within the museum.”

Nicole’s Faunal Project from the Swann site

Thanks, Nicole, for sharing your expertise in all things animal bone!

Abby (C) with fellow interns Kaitlin (L) and Julia (R)

Your support can help us provide internships to the next generation of archaeology and historic preservation professionals! If you are able, please consider making a tax-deductible internship donation to the Lost Towns Project today. Every contribution, no matter the size, makes a big difference in preserving local history. Thank you!

County Archaeologists Present at the Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference

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This past weekend, March 24-27, Anne Arundel County Archaeological Sites Planner Stacy Poulos and consultant Drew Webster participated in the Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference in Ocean City, MD.

Stacy Poulos
Drew Webster

Stacy was featured as a panelist on “The Sea is Rising and the Mountains are Sliding: A Discussion of Climate Change, Middle Atlantic Cultural Heritage, and Actions We Must Take.” The panel discussion brought together our colleagues who are engaged in site discovery, documentation, and mitigation with those who are creating programs to prioritize and preserve cultural heritage.

Drew presented a poster entitled, “55,555 Artifacts from the Swann Site, Calvert County, Maryland.” The poster summarizes the findings from the Swann Site, the largest site assemblage in the Ogle Collection. You can view the poster 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