Abstract
These authors have set out to do the near impossible: review and synthesize decades of archaeological excavations undertaken by a wide range of investigators in a large, historically dynamic eastern city. While not the first effort of its kind, it is the first book to attempt this task for the City of Baltimore, Maryland, also known by the nickname, Charm City. Most of the work discussed was undertaken in the context of cultural resources management compliance, reported in limited distribution “gray literature,” making even the task of locating the basic documentation of the investigations a considerable challenge just in itself.
The book opens with a discussion of the nature of urban archaeology as archaeology both in and of the city, a concept first introduced by Bert Salween. While excavations are undertaken at specific locations in the city, illuminating the lives of the site's occupants and the history of that location, placing such results in a broader context can address larger-scale processes of urban development. The authors state that their goal is to use the City's archaeology to document patterns of inequality that have led to poverty and violence. Capitalism, colonialism, Eurocentrism, and racialization are identified as critical to understanding the City's past in order to help understand a present that is still shaped by these processes. The authors make clear that they are not so much attempting to present a history of Baltimore per se but rather use an archaeological lens to examine facets of the City's past.
The following chapter presents a capsule history of archaeology in Baltimore, recognizing the 1980 excavations at the construction site of the new Federal Reserve Bank and the 1983 establishment of the Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology as seminal events leading to wider professional and public interest in the City's archaeology. The following four chapters are basically organized chronologically, but the focus is actually on wide-ranging technological and economic forces affecting the City's development from colonial merchant port through nineteenth-century industrialization to finally late twentieth-century patterns of disinvestment. There is a separate chapter on foodways before the concluding chapter, which focuses on deindustrialization before presenting conclusions. Throughout the volume, the authors combine the material results of archaeology with social and economic history to show how Baltimore's landscape and institutions evolved and how Baltimoreans adapted to changing circumstances over the course of their everyday life experiences.
These discussions convincingly show how excavations can uncover patterns of inequality in urbanization and industrialization that connect to social and economic processes still affecting the city today. The lens of archaeology reveals processes that sought to maximize profit through stratification and exploitation of the city's working people. The authors bring together large amounts of data never previously gathered in one place and demonstrate how urban archaeology can approach cities as large, complex, yet knowable, collective artifacts.
The writing is lively and expresses the excitement of archaeological discovery throughout despite overall goals and results that are somewhat distressing, even depressing. The City's rich archaeological heritage brings the lives of past Baltimoreans vividly to life, while at the same time revealing socioeconomic processes that created and maintained racially-based inequality and poverty.
The authors conclude with a call for the future archaeology of Baltimore to better serve and involve its citizens, telling the stories of all its residents, especially those marginalized and generally ill-served by documentary history. They identify the need for a sustained and systematic archaeological program supported by regulation of development, similar to those found in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland. They are close by looking forward to a more inclusive and representative future for archaeology in Baltimore.
Anyone interested in the history of Baltimore and of Maryland will find this volume indispensable, as will archaeologists working in other urban centers for its comparative value. Sections may also be assigned in archaeological method and theory courses as a model for how long-term, synthetic archaeology can be approached.
I did, however, find one aspect of the volume disappointing. Citations are presented as endnotes located at the end of the text, rather than at the end of each chapter, or in the Harvard-style parenthetical form most common in anthropology and archaeology. This choice significantly reduces the ease of use of the volume for this reviewer. That quibble notwithstanding, this is an important book that deserves to be widely read.