The Anne Arundel, Maryland, Lost Towns Project is a long-term research and educational effort aimed at the archaeological rediscovery of a number of Chesapeake Bay colonial port towns that have disappeared from the landscape. The earliest of these was the first European settlement in the county—a place the inhabitants called “Providence” or “Severn,” which was founded in 1649.[1] Over the last decade a total of eight sites have been located that can be associated with the Providence settlement.
The earliest of these is the Broadneck site, containing the remains of a “sill on the ground” building measuring approximately forty feet long and sixteen feet wide. A large earthen cellar, which once existed under the oorboards of the building, was excavated. The archaeological evidence suggests that the structure burned sometime in the 1650s. By that time, a number of interesting artifacts—such as a large iron pestle, an axe, a key, and a broken case bottle—had been deposited in the cellar along with a quantity of fireplace ash and food remains.
The short-term occupation of the site resulted in a fairly low overall artifact count. Ceramic finds included Rhenish brown salt-glazed stoneware, tin-glazed earthenware, Border ware, and redware. Interestingly, the site contained no examples of North Devon gravel-tempered earthenware, an extremely common ware type on all other Providence sites, sometimes reaching over eighty percent of the total ceramics recovered. The absence of this ceramic type is possibly due to the relatively early circa 1650 date assigned to the site’s destruction. In the course of the cellar excavation, a pile of large sherds was uncovered that had been deliberately stacked on the original cellar oor (fig. 1). These proved to be the fragments of a Portuguese tin-glazed earthenware plate bearing a painted armorial device—a lion rampant surrounded by foliage and surmounted by a closed helmet (fig. 2). Intriguingly, the arms are an exact match for those of the Lloyd family—Edward Lloyd was the first “Commander” of the Providence settlement. Eventually the Lloyds became one of the wealthiest families in the Chesapeake—founding Wye Plantation on the Eastern Shore—and lent their family arms to the county seal of Talbot County, Maryland.
As intriguing as this association is, however, the discovery of virtually identical plates in such disparate places as New England, Amsterdam, and Brazil call such a specific familial association into doubt.[2] In fact, in the case of the Brazilian find, the armorial device is attributed to the Portuguese General of the Armada Francisco Correa da Silva! Although more research may yet decipher the relationship of the amorial plate to the Lloyd family, the Broadneck plate has been characterized as “unquestionably one of the most important examples of seventeenth-century tin-glazed earthenware yet found in America.”[3] Today it is on permanent display at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, Maryland.
Al Luckenbach
Founder and Director
Maryland Lost Towns Project
<http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Square/6653/>
<alluck@aol.com>
