Lost Towns Project Awarded SHINE Grant from Maryland Humanities!

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We are grateful to be one of 50 Maryland nonprofit organizations to receive $10,000 in general operating funding from Maryland Humanities’ SHINE Program (Strengthening the Humanities Investment in Nonprofits for Equity).

As a very small volunteer-based non-profit, grant funding is critical to our ability to provide history and archaeology research and programming to our community. In 2023, we are excited to continue our volunteer and intern programs, documenting historical and archaeological sites, preserving historic cemeteries, providing interactive fieldtrips for middle school students, and more.

More information about the SHINE Grants can be found here.

This project has been financed in part with State Funds from the Maryland Historical Trust, an agency of the Maryland Department of Planning which is an instrumentality of the State of Maryland. However, project contents or opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Maryland Historical Trust or the Maryland Department of Planning.

Welcome Summer Interns!

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TWO graduate students, FIVE undergrads, ONE high schooler, and ONE recent grad walk into an archaeology lab…

Wait–it’s not a joke:

This is our amazing crew of 2022 interns and they are keeping the Lost Towns Project and Anne Arundel County’s Preservation Stewardship Program BUSY this summer!

Interns Kaitlin Sennewald and Julia Ribblett learn the basics of archaeology field techniques at the River Farm Site in Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary

Our Interns hail from educational institutions across Maryland, as well as the Midwest, New England, and the UK, and are focusing on a variety of archaeology, preservation and heritage research. Projects range from learning the basics of field and lab methods, documenting historic cemeteries, and studying the impacts of climate change on historic sites, to a study of the the archaeology of black spaces on plantation landscapes, zooarchaeology (the study of animal bones), and analyzing artifacts from the Ogle Research Collection to explore interactions between Native American groups in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic over 2,000 years ago. Stay tuned for their blog posts as they highlight their research projects.

Special thanks to funding from Maryland Humanities and their SHARP Recovery Grants Fund1, matched by generous donations by our supporters. This funding has allowed the Lost Towns Project offer two interns financial stipends for the first time ever. Offering financial support has raised the quality and commitment of our intern pool, and undoubtedly helped with gas expenses!

We would love to offer funding for three interns next summer. If you are able to help us support the rising stars in the fields of archaeology and historic preservation, please consider making an internship donation to the Lost Towns Project today. (LTP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit–so it’s tax deductible!) History will thank you!

1Funding 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.

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