Below Baltimore

The first synthesis of the archaeological

heritage of Baltimore





Below Baltimore provides the first detailed overview of the rich archaeological

heritage of the people and city of Baltimore. Drawing on a combined five

decades of experience in the Chesapeake region and compiling 70 years of published

and unpublished records, Adam Fracchia and Patricia Samford explore the layers

of the city's material record from the late seventeenth century to the recent past.



Fracchia

and Samford focus on major themes and movements such as Baltimore's growth into

a mercantile port city, the city's diverse immigrant populations and the

history of their foodways, and the ways industries--including railroads, glass factories,

sugar refineries, and breweries--structured the city's landscape. Using insights

from artifacts and the built environment, they detail individual lives and

experiences within different historical periods and show how the city has

changed over time.



Synthesizing

a large amount of information that has never before been gathered in one place,

Below Baltimore demonstrates how

urban archaeology can approach cities as larger collective artifacts of the

past, where excavations can uncover patterns of inequality in urbanization and

industrialization that connect to social and economic processes still at work

today.