Below Baltimore

Society for Historical Archaeology James Deetz Book Award

The first synthesis of the archaeologicalheritage of Baltimore

Below Baltimore provides the first detailed overview of the rich archaeologicalheritage of the people and city of Baltimore. Drawing on a combined fivedecades of experience in the Chesapeake region and compiling 70 years of publishedand unpublished records, Adam Fracchia and Patricia Samford explore the layersof the city’s material record from the late seventeenth century to the recent past.

Fracchiaand Samford focus on major themes and movements such as Baltimore’s growth intoa mercantile port city, the city’s diverse immigrant populations and thehistory of their foodways, and the ways industries—including railroads, glass factories,sugar refineries, and breweries—structured the city’s landscape. Using insightsfrom artifacts and the built environment, they detail individual lives andexperiences within different historical periods and show how the city haschanged over time.

Synthesizinga large amount of information that has never before been gathered in one place,Below Baltimore demonstrates howurban archaeology can approach cities as larger collective artifacts of thepast, where excavations can uncover patterns of inequality in urbanization andindustrialization that connect to social and economic processes still at worktoday.