| Location: | Chapline, Calvert County, MD, United States |
|---|---|
| Occupation Dates: | Late 18th to early 19th century. Phasing and mean ceramic dates can be found on the Chronology page. |
| Excavator(s): | Epochs Past (Phase I and II) and Dames & Moore, Inc (Phase III). |
| Dates excavated: | 1997, 1998, and 1999. |
Overview
Panoramic view of 18CV344 prior to Phase I testing.
Chapline Place is located in the town of Prince Frederick, Maryland, west of Maryland Route 2/4. The site was investigated in advance of commercial development. Archaeological remains of a late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century occupation were found (Myers et al. 1999:ii,1).
A Phase I survey was conducted in the fall of 1997 to establish the boundaries of 18CV344. The site was determined to be eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. The site was determined to be approximately 300-x-250 feet. A Phase II survey was conducted in late 1998 to further determine the site’s eligibility as well as gather more information regarding its age and usage. A Phase III survey of 18CV344 was conducted in the spring of 1999 (Myers et al. 1999:26; Dames & Moore:2, 3).
Documentary evidence
Chapline Place was part of a 250 acre parcel patented in 1666, known as Overton. By 1682, the property was owned by John Hance and remained in the Hance family until 1815, when the land was conveyed to Robert Lowe following a lawsuit regarding an unpaid debt (Myers et al. 1999:17; Dames & Moore:3).
Excavation history, procedure and methods
Gradall stripping plowzone in Area A.
The Phase I consisted of 138 shovel test pits (STPs) placed at 50-foot intervals with an additional forty-five STPs at the core of the site. Soils were screened through ¼-inch hardware cloth. One of the radial STPs revealed an eighteenth-century pit feature (Myers et al. 1999:28, 37).
The Phase II consisted of additional STPs, the excavation of fourteen test units, and a geoarchaeological survey. Eight 5-x-5 foot units were placed in high artifact concentration areas, including the feature discovered during the Phase I. Six 5-x-2.5 foot units were placed to investigate anomalies discovered during the geophysical survey (Myers et al. 1999:28, 32; Dames & Moore:2).
For the Phase III, three areas of interest were chosen for further investigation. Fifteen 5-x-5 foot test units were excavated by hand and screened through ¼-inch hardware cloth. Stratigraphy of the units revealed multiple plowzones. Following excavation of the squares, the three areas were stripped down to subsoil by a gradall to expose any features. All features were bisected and if found to be cultural, were excavated in their entirety (Dames & Moore:3).
In all, nineteen cultural features were excavated; the most significant being three rectangular subfloor pits, one circular pit, eleven driven posts, and possibly the remnants of a brick hearth.
Summary of research and analysis
Based on the presence of subfloor pits and lack of support posts, 18CV344 represents multiple, impermanent dwellings. The small, driven posts and trench most likely represent fencelines dating to after the structures (Dames & Moore:4, 5).
Based on the artifact assemblage and historic record, it isn’t clear whether 18CV344 was occupied by enslaved African-Americans, free blacks, an overseer, a family member who hasn’t come into his/her inheritance, or any combination. What is known is that the owner of Overton, of which this site was a part, did not live at 18CV344 (Dames & Moore:5).
Jesse Sawyer
Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
October 2006
Things you need to know about Chapline Place (18CV344) before you use the data:
- Measurements are in feet and tenths of feet.
- 100% of the plowzone was screened through 1/4-inch mesh.
Feature Numbers
The original excavators of Chapline Place (18CV344) did not assign numbers to individual features. DAACS staff assigned feature numbers using the original excavation records. Feature Numbers have a F-prefix, which precedes the number (i.e. F01 equals Feature 1).
Excavated contexts that belong to the same depositional basin (e.g. a posthole and postmold or the layers in a single pit) have been assigned a single feature number. In addition, single contexts have been given feature numbers when the original field records indicate that the excavators recognized a context’s spatial distinctiveness from surrounding contexts.
Feature Groups
Feature groups are sets of features whose spatial arrangements indicate they were part of a single structure (e.g. structural postholes, subfloor pits, and hearth) or landscape element (e.g. postholes that comprise a fenceline). Feature Groups assigned by DAACS have a FG-prefix, which precedes the number (i.e. FG01 equals Feature Group 1).
| Feature | Feature Type | Contexts |
|---|---|---|
| F09 | Post, driven | F09.A |
| F14 | Post, driven | F14.A |
| F15 | Post, driven | F15.A |
| F16 | Post, driven | F16.A |
| Feature | Feature Type | Contexts |
|---|---|---|
| F12 | Post, driven | F12.A |
| F17 | Post, driven | F17.A |
| F18 | Post, driven | F18.A |
| F19 | Post, driven | F19.A |
| F20 | Post, driven | F20.A |
| Feature | Feature Type | Contexts |
|---|---|---|
| F01 | Pit, subfloor(< 28 sq.ft) | F01.01, F01.02, F01.03, F01.C |
| F02 | Hearth, possible | F02.01, F02.02 |
| F03 | Posthole | F03.01, F03.02 |
| F04 | Tree hole | F04.A |
| F05 | Trench, unidentified | F05.A |
| F06 | Tree hole | F06.A |
| F07 | Tree hole | F07.A, F07.B |
| F08 | Pit, trash | F08.A |
| F10 | Pit, subfloor(< 28 sq.ft) | F10.SE, F10.A, F10.B, F10.C, F10.D, F10.E |
| F11 | Pit, subfloor(< 28 sq.ft) | F11.A |
| F13 | Trench, fence | F13.A |
| F21 | Post, driven | F21.A |
| F22 | Post, driven | F22.A |
DAACS Seriation Method
DAACS staff aim to produce a seriation-based chronology for each slave-quarter site using the same methods (see Neiman, Galle, and Wheeler 2003 for technical details). Only assemblages from features or stratigraphic groups with more than five ceramic sherds are included in these ceramic-based seriations. Plowzone contexts do not contribute to a DAACS seriation-based chronology. Although two features at the Chapline Place quarter contained more than 5 ceramic sherds (F01=16 sherds; F11= 12 sherds), DAACS was unable to produce a statistically significant seriation-based chronology for the site. However, the site-wide Mean Ceramic Date of 1774 points to the site’s temporal placement in the third-to-fourth quarters of the eighteenth century.
Two other measures that are less sensitive to excavation errors and taphonomic processes that might introduce a small amount of anomalously late material into an assemblage were used. They are TPQp90 and TPQp95. The TPQp95 of 1780 provides a robust estimate of the site’s TPQ based on the 95th percentile of the beginning manufacturing dates for all the artifacts comprising it. The TPQp90 of 1775 provides a more robust estimate of the site’s TPQ based on the 90th percentile of the beginning manufacturing dates for all the artifacts comprising it.
Chapline Place Mean Ceramic Date and TPQs
Chapline Place (18CV344) Harris Matrix
The Harris Matrix summarizes stratigraphic relationships among excavated contexts and groups of contexts that DAACS staff has identified as part of the same stratigraphic group. Stratigraphic groups and contexts are represented as boxes, while lines connecting them represent temporal relationships implied by the site’s stratification, as recorded by the site’s excavators (Harris 1979).
Stratigraphic groups, which represent multiple contexts, are identified on the diagram by their numeric designations (e.g. SG01) followed by the original excavator’s descriptions of them (e.g. “plowzone”). Contexts that could not be assigned to stratigraphic groups are identified by their individual context numbers (e.g. P2-01.04).
Boxes with color fill represent contexts and stratigraphic groups with ceramic assemblages large enough to be included in the DAACS seriation of the site (see Chronology). Their seriation-based phase assignments are denoted by different colors to facilitate evaluation of the agreement between the stratigraphic and seriation chronologies. Grey boxes represent contexts that were not included in the seriation because of small ceramic samples.
See 18CV344 Chronology for stratigraphic and phase information.
This Harris Matrix is based on data on stratigraphic relationships recorded among contexts in the DAACS database. It was drawn with the ArchEd application. See http://www.ads.tuwien.ac.at/arched/index.html.
For a printable version, download the Harris Matrix [57.24 KB PDF].
PDF of composite excavator’s plan, compiled by DAACS from original field drawings, with excavation units and features labeled.
PDF of composite excavator’s plan, compiled by DAACS from original field drawings, with only features labeled.
PDF of composite excavator’s plan, compiled by DAACS from original field drawings, with only excavation units labeled.
Dames & Moore, Inc.
1999 Chapline Place: Phase III Archeological Investigations Of Site 18CV344, A Mid-Eighteenth To Early-Nineteenth Century Residential Site, Calvert County, Maryland. Report prepared for the Osprey Property Group.
Harris, Edward C.
1979 Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. Academic Press, London, England.
Myers, L. Daniel, Dana Linck , and Paula Mask
1999 Final Report For A “Phase I And II” Archaeological Investigation Of The Proposed Young Property’s Young Archaeological Site (18CV344), Prince Frederick, Calvert County, Maryland. Report prepared for the Osprey Development Corporation, July 1999.
Neiman, Fraser D., Jillian E. Galle , and Derek Wheeler
2003 Chronological Inference and DAACS. Unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Providence, Rhode Island. On file at the Department of Archaeology, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Charlottesville, Virginia.
