Lecture – Once the Metropolis of Maryland: Celebrating 50 Years of Archaeology at HSMC

This lecture celebrates 50 years of archaeology conducted at Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC), a museum of history and archaeology at Maryland’s first capital.  In 1967, Orin Bullock, and later J. Glenn Little and Stephen Israel, surveyed the 18^th-century Captain John Hicks site, initiating the first museum-sponsored archaeological work at St. Mary’s City.  In the decades since these efforts, HSMC staff members have conducted fieldwork around the museum’s property and analyzed the material culture they recovered, pioneering innovative archaeological techniques and revealing new details about life in early Maryland.  This lecture honors this rich legacy of work done over the last 50 years while also sharing recent research conducted by the staff of HSMC’s Department of Research and Collections.