Locus 6-1 (18ST865)

Locus 6-1 (19ST865) is a nineteenth to early twentieth-century domestic site located at Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Lexington Park, Maryland. The site is located near the intersection of Tate Road and West Patrol Road in the northwestern portion of the Naval Air Station, to the east of a marsh and pond. A tenant house built in 1937, designated as Quarters C and used as a Chief Petty Officers Club by the Navy was demolished in the 1960s.

The area was a farm property and plantation, with a long history tracing back to a patent made in 1652 to Luke Gardiner (Pogue 1983:29-30). In the twentieth century, the farmhouse associated with the property was known as Hodgdon House, documented architecturally as MIHP SM-361, and archaeologically as 18ST712. This house stood north of Locus 6-1. Photographs from the 1940s indicate that there were numerous structures on the farm property, including barns and a slave cabin, and possibly tenant houses or secondary residential structures.

Locus 6-1 appears to have been the site of a farmhouse occupied principally in the nineteenth century and very first years of the twentieth century. Historic maps show a house in the area in 1905 (USGS 1905), but not present in 1880 (USCGS 1880).

The site has been plowed, and was at one point redeveloped by the Navy, but appears to retain a moderate degree of integrity. There may have been some grading of the area associated with the nearby roads and driveways, and buildings. Archaeological excavations were conducted in 2012 and 2013 as part of a larger Phase II survey of the Naval Air Station, Webster Field and the Naval Recreation Center at Solomons. Shovel tests were excavated across the site on a 15 meter grid. Radial tests were excavated at 7.5 meters. Stratigraphy at the site consists of a plowzone above subsoil, with artifacts mostly limited to the plowzone.

An anomalous soil deposit, believed to have been a filled-in cellar hole, was identified in two shovel tests in the Phase I testing. In these shovel tests, the soil profiles included a light olive brown (2.5Y5/3) silt loam below the plowzone and above the subsoil. The soil deposit was artifact-bearing. In one of the shovel tests this possible cellar hole fill extended from 30-45 cm below surface. Other than the possible cellar hole, no features were identified at the site. Phase II testing concluded that Feature 1 was actually a demolition event associated with the razing on Quarters C, the Navy housing. The deposit was not confined to one area, as would be expected for a cellar, but dispersed in patches across the site.

Artifacts recovered from the site are principally architectural and domestic items that can be broadly dated to the last half of the nineteenth century and initial portion of the twentieth century.

(Modified from state site form by Patricia Samford)