Visitors were invited to sift through screens to find artifacts at the Calvert House site in the Town Center at Historic St. Mary's City on July 25-26. Staff and this summer's archaeology field school students gave tours of the site, displayed artifacts, dug in carefully delineated locations and sifted through the dirt.

A variety of artifacts were found including a piece of white pottery with a blue design, coal, brick fragments and oyster shells. On Saturday morning Heidi Ewing, a field school college student enthusiastically gave tours to visitors. She explained that in the 1640's, around the time of the English civil war Nathaniel Pope owned the building, originally known as the Calvert house.

A privateer, Richard Ingle, captured the colony and was holding a number of people captive in the building, including Jesuit priests. Ingle built a fort around the house which is currently being excavated by staff and students. The site was most recently occupied by the Brome Howard Inn, which was moved to its current location at 18281 Rosecroft Rd in 1993.) The fort was found when the Brome Howard Inn's septic tank broke.

Dr. Tim Riordan was digging in the dirt by a spot where they were looking for a post hole from part of a Calvert House out-building. He said that last year they found a Native American pipe bowl with an abstract design of a running stag near that hole. As part of the activities, visitors could register for a behind-the-scenes archaeology lab tour. Silas Hurry and Don Winter were guiding tours through the lab, a building which is open to the public once year.

Visitors were asked to think of themselves as artifacts newly arrived at the archaeology lab. They would be logged in using the Smithsonian Trinomial system with information about the location, earth layer, excavator, and date. Then artifacts are washed, sorted, re-bagged, numbered, cataloged, counted, weighed, measured, drawn if they are fairly interesting and preserved.

The two gentlemen led the group downstairs. In the basement the storage area is carefully temperature and humidity controlled. A piece of very old window glass could be viewed under a microscope to see the date etched into the edge of the glass. Mr. Hurry shared a number of interesting objects found on the Historic St. Mary's City property including a pottery shard with the word "what" from a Merry-man verse plate, a sword pommel, the metal clasp of a lady's purse and some clay pipe stems. Visitors were encouraged to ask questions.

Other activities offered as part of the Tidewater Archaeology weekend included learning about the cannons on the Maryland Dove, visiting an interactive Woodland Indian Hamlet to see how the Yaocomaco Indians lived, touring the most recent exhibits, and being taught about 17th century muskets. Silas Hurry is pictured at the Archaeology Lab