Site History

Site 18ST233, Old Chapel Field, is located aboard the Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s Webster Field Annex in St. Inigoes, Maryland.  In 1637, Jesuit missionaries purchased the property in St. Inigoes to raise tobacco and other crops.  These Jesuits were among the original investors in the Maryland colonial enterprise, and their initial goal in settling in Maryland was the conversion of local American Indians.  The plantation was not itself a mission, but rather a working farm intended to support the Jesuit missionary efforts elsewhere in Maryland. 

Old Chapel Field (18ST233) represents the earliest center of activity for a plantation that would continue as a Jesuit settlement for the next two centuries. By the end of the 17th century, however, the residential core of this settlement had moved across a ravine from 18ST233 to the Fly/St. Inigoes Manor House site (18ST329/330), saving the earliest occupational deposits from disturbance by later development.

Archaeology

18ST233 was identified in 1977 by Steve Wilkie and Gail Thompson and a series of studies of Webster Field were subsequently conducted by the Southern Maryland Regional Center.  Old Chapel Field was an object of study during a 1981 field school, and additional phase I testing took place in 1996.  In 2000, Phase II testing of 18ST233 focused on areas identified as having high concentrations of artifacts during the shovel test surveys.  Twenty test units were excavated to subsoil and several of these exposed features.  Features include grave shafts from a 17th-century cemetery, a pit feature laden with oyster shell, and a portion of a probable earthfast structure with an associated borrow pit.  The graves were not excavated, but limited testing of the shell feature and borrow pit associated with the earthfast structure confirmed the early occupation of the site.  The shell-pit has tentatively been identified as a shell-rendering kiln, but further excavation is needed to define the dimensions and function of the earthfast structure.

Artifacts recovered at 18ST233 are consistent with Maryland’s earliest colonial history.  Glass beads, a possible copper bead, a jaw harp, locally-made tobacco pipes, and an iron knife were among the items recovered that are often considered popular trade goods intended for exchange between the colonists and the local American Indians.  A coin weight and jeton found at 18ST233 might also be interpreted as possible trade goods, since copper was a desirable commodity among the local American Indians.  However, these artifacts could also indicate that an early system of doing math with a counter board was still in use, and that currency values required verification in a location without its own official coin; both of which fit well into known cultural practices of the early colonial period in Maryland.

Tobacco pipes include locally-made pipes, agatized pipes, and white-clay pipes.  Locally-made pipes (n=350) far outnumbered white clay pipes (n=154).  Only 44 of the white clay pipe stems had measurable bores, but the majority of these (n=24) had a bore diameter of 8/64th of an inch, which is associated with a date range between 1620 and 1650.

Summary by Sara Rivers Cofield

References

The 18ST233 archaeological collections are owned by the Naval District Washington, Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s Webster Field Annex, and curated by the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.