The Ogle Collection and the Maryland State Standards for Archaeological Collections

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By Gabriella Gonzalez. Gabriella is a Senior at the University of Maryland, College Park Anthropology Department and a current fall intern with the Lost Towns Project and the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Lab.

In 2009, Anne Arundel County received a donation of 176 boxes of artifacts from Robert Ogle. In the collection the staff has found 154 different archaeological sites. This collection took 50 years to collect and the staff, volunteers, and interns have been working to process the 160,000 artifacts to state standards. 

Shawn Sharpe intaking the Ogle Collection in 2009

Robert Ogle was a professional land surveyor and over the course of 50 years he collected artifacts in central and southern Maryland. Many sites he collected from were destroyed in the 1960s and 1970s so his collection of artifacts, maps, notebooks, and pictures are the last record of these sites. He stored these artifacts in coffee cans and cigar boxes. However, the team had to work to organize and remove them from the deteriorating containers and bring them up to state standards. This collection is important because even though 80 sites were known archaeological sites, 30 were unknown and unreported in central and southern Maryland.

Bag tags with Swann site numbers

To bring this collection to state standards the team had to start by giving the sites site numbers. For example, the site numbers for the Swann sites in Calvert County are 18CV4, 18CV40, 18CV41, 18CV42, 18CV43, and 18CV472. 18 stands for Maryland, because it was the 18th state alphabetically* CV stands for Calvert County. The numbers following CV are the different archaeological sites found on Swann Farm. To obtain site number the team had to contact the MAC lab. Once the artifacts were removed from the original containers they were organized by where they were found and what they were. 

Labeled artifacts from the Swann sites

After obtaining the lot numbers the team had to work to properly clean and repackage the artifacts. According to state standards stable artifacts can be cleaned unless they have to be kept to perform residue analysis. Ceramics, glass, tobacco pipes, lithics, and bine may be wet-washed individually. Shell, brick, FCR, flag, and coal may be wet-washed in bulk. All metals, wood, leather, textiles, and fragile objects may be cleaned with a dry-brush. Stone-tools, ceramics, tobacco pipe stems, and tobacco pipe bowls may be left unwashed for specialized residue analysis. In some cases certain artifacts were washed with equal parts water and alcohol. 

All artifacts have to be cataloged with site number, lot number, artifact number, provenience information, artifact count, and artifact description. These must then be used in the labeling process. If the object is too small it does not have to be labeled. Ferrous metals, mortar/daub/plaster, wood, leather, textiles, fragile bone/shell, fragile non-ferrous metals are not to be labeled. Diagnostic ceramics/glass, lithic tools/cores, tobacco pipes, stable non-ferrous metals, and small finds may be labeled individually. Plain ceramic body sherds, plain glass body sherds, window glass, brick, lithic debitage (flake, shatter, etc.), FCR, and stable bone/shell are to be labeled, but only 10% of the lot. Labels must not cover any important markings or wrap around the artifact, or be placed on broken edges. Acid-free tags with the site, lot, and artifact number may be tied to beads, buttons or pierced coins. 

A completed bag

When bagging the artifacts they must be bagged in perforated polyethylene ziplock bags with acid-free tags. The bags must be labeled with site number, lot number, and the full provenience information. Once artifacts have been bagged they must go into boxes in numerical order. These boxes must then be labeled with a temporary label which includes the box number, the types of artifacts, lot numbers, and site numbers.

After these processes have been completed the artifacts from the Ogle collection may be sent to the MAC lab for curation. The team at the Lost Towns Project and the Anne Arundel County Archaeology Lab have been working intensely to make the collection meet state standards. The Ogle collection is very important to shed light on the archaeological sites that have never been reported and because many of the sites have been lost. 

Gabriella labeling buttons from the Swann sites

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*before the addition of Alaska and Hawaii. More information.

Intern Spotlight: Heather McKee

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This is the fourth in a series of posts highlighting our awesome summer interns! Next is Heather McKee. Heather interned with us last summer and has returned this summer to pursue an independent research project.

Heather is a junior at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island (the city that pretends it’s a better sailing town than Annapolis). She is working towards a double major in Sociology/Anthropology and Cultural & Historic Preservation with a focus in Archaeology. Sounds like a quintuple major to me!

“This summer I am working on an independent research project about the Ogle Collection about the societal interactions that took place between the Ohio Valley and the Adena, Hopewell, and Meadowood cultures in Maryland.

Adena point made of Mistassini quartzite (L) and Hopewell point made of Flint Ridge chert (R) from the Ogle Collection

“As an intern, I have learned a lot about cataloguing and various tasks in the lab as well as how to properly excavate an archaeological site. I have also learned more about Maryland’s history through the research I am conducting for my independent project.”

Thanks, Heather, for two years of research, labwork, and fieldwork!

Heather (L) in 2021 with former interns Ray (C) and Claire (R)

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student looking for a research project in archaeology, history, or historic preservation? The Lost Towns Project works with the Anne Arundel County Archaeological Laboratory to connect interested researchers with projects that span over 13,000 years of human history. Contact [email protected] for more information.

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