Ashcomb's Quarter and Awapantop (18CV362)

The Ashcomb's Quarter and Awapantop site (18CV362) represents a mid-17th to early 18th-century rural domestic site and a Late Archaic through Late Woodland hamlet/shell midden. There is a 19th-century component as well. The site is located on the Solomons Naval Recreation Center at Solomons, Maryland.

Diagnostic artifacts and historical research point to a site occupation between 1684 and 1730. Though historical documents are few, they indicate that the tract most likely had an absentee owner during this period, Charles Ashcomb, who referred to the tract as "My Quarter" in his 1702 will. The Ashcomb's Quarter inhabitants are unknown, but the use of the term "quarter" in the 18th century generally implied the presence of an overseer and slaves rather than a tenant occupied site which would have been called "tenement." Although he lived on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Ashcomb owned numerous African slaves, so it is plausible that some of them were living at Ashcomb's Quarter under the supervision of an overseer.

The site was first tested archaeologically in 1995 by John Harmon of Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum, with the placement of 47 shovel test pits at 25 ft. intervals. A total of 756 historic artifacts (ceramic, pipes, glass, nails, and oyster shell) were recovered, as well as a single prehistoric flake.

Phase II testing was conducted by KEMRON Environmental Services in 1997, with the excavation of ten 5x5 ft. units This work revealed that the site had been partially impacted by construction, grading, and filling activities occurring within the previous 40 years, but also showed the presence of potentially well-preserved artifact-bearing deposits in some areas of the site. Domestic artifacts dating from as early as the mid-1700s (pipestem and pearlware dates) to as late as the mid-1900s (wire nails and whiteware) and architectural debris such as brick, mortar, etc. suggested the presence of a structure, probably a habitation The site appears to have a predominance of utilitarian type ceramic material mixed in with a small amount of finer tableware ceramics.

Between November of 1997 and March of 1998, John Milner Associates conducted Phase III data recovery excavations, digging 38 5x5 ft. units and three areas were mechanically stripped to expose subsurface features. The results of Phase III data recovery indicate the footprints of at least three post-in-ground structures dating to the early 18th century, coinciding with the ownership of the site by Charles Ashcomb, c. 1702-c. 1730. The earthfast buildings included a three bay outbuilding or quarter measuring about 10' by 20' (Structure 1), a possible shed of unknown dimensions (Structure 2), and a two-bay probable dwelling measuring about 18' by 15' (Structure 3). The possible dwelling was interpreted as a shed with a dairy by the authors of the report, but there is evidence of a hearth (Features 53 and 56) and the proximity to the dairy and several nearby trash-filled pits fits well with patterns for dwellings at other sites, such as King’s Reach. The 10' by 20' Structure 1 is listed in the report as a tobacco house, but the dimensions are simply too small to support this interpretation.

The site was likely not occupied by Ashcomb or his family, but by tenants or the enslaved. Structural evidence indicates that the buildings were not rebuilt, replaced, or maintained, but were probably short-term in occupation. The artifact assemblage recovered included a large number of tobacco pipes of the period 1710-1750, local and imported ceramics dating from the end of the 17th through the early 18th centuries, and a large assemblage of faunal remains. In addition, there is also archeological evidence (particularly early ceramics and pipe fragments), recovered from within the deep ravine on the site and in the plowzone units of the earlier (c. 1650-1660) initial settlement of the tract known as Compton.

The development project that initiated the archaeological work was scrapped when excavations uncovered a prehistoric grave. Prehistoric artifacts from the site included a bannerstone fragment, a Piscataway point, a possible Calvert point, one Popes Creek-like sherd, a few Mockley sherds, a Stony Creek stamped sherd, two small Rappahannock Incised sherds, and many sherds of Yeocomico, Sullivan, Rappahannock Fabric-Impressed, Townsend Corded Horizontal, probably Potomac Creek, and possibly Moyaone or Camden. Yeocomico Plain sherds comprise the great majority at the site, suggesting most intense use of this location occurred around A.D. 1500-1640. The radiocarbon date for a feature supports this date (c. A.D. 1310-1640).

An unknown amount of the site has eroded into the Patuxent River.

(Edited from archeological site survey form, Maryland Historical Trust, and essay by Sara Rivers Cofield)