Lunch and Learn: Reflections on Early Maryland and its Lost City

The story of seventeenth-century Maryland is given little recognition in American history and yet it is one of high relevance. In this presentation, some of the many findings about Maryland are considered, including the decades-long archaeological search for its first capital of St. Mary’s City. History and Archaeology provide distinct insights about the past and when combined, a much fuller understanding of this new immigrant society that formed along the Chesapeake Bay may be obtained. As with all human endeavors, early Maryland was a mixture of the positive and the negative, but certain aspects were radically new and significant precedents directly instituted by Lord Baltimore. These have enduring value and merit broader acknowledgement.

Presented by Dr. Henry Miller, an historical archaeologist who served as Laboratory Director and then Director of Research for the state museum of Historic St. Mary’s City between 1977 and 2018 and is now the museum’s Maryland Heritage Scholar. In 1997, he served as President of the international Society for Historical Archaeology, and in 2011-12, he taught and did research at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oxford University, U. K. He has been the Principal Investigator on numerous archaeological projects and co-director of the unique Project Lead Coffins that identified 17th-century members of Maryland’s founding family – the Calverts. Miller has conducted the excavation, analysis, design and reconstruction of six 17th-century buildings, including the 1660’s Brick Chapel, and been involved with numerous HSMC exhibits as well as those at Jamestown, Yorktown, Colonial Williamsburg and the Maryland Historical Society, and served as a Core Team member in design of the Written in Bone: Forensic Files from the 17th-Century Chesapeake exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (2009-2014). In 2020, he was honored to receive the J. C. Harrington Medal from the Society for Historical Archaeology, the highest international award in the field for lifetime contributions to scholarship.