A Field Trip To Wye

On Wednesday, we travelled to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and toured the historic Wye House, the current site being excavated by Dr. Mark Leone’s Archaeology in Annapolis Field School. The Wye House, situated on the Wye River near Easton, was settled in the seventeenth century and remains a privately held home. This site became famous through Frederick Douglas’ description of his childhood there in his autobiographies, such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (the first and published in 1845).

Upon our arrival at Wye House, it was impossible to ignore the obvious differences between our urban and industrial sites at Texas and the Irish Shrine with the quiet and pastoral landscape of Wye. On the surface our projects are drastically different, but after a tour of the excavations and property by Dr. Leone, several similarities and historical links became apparent.

First, the lives of the slaves who worked the fields of the Wye House and the Irish immigrants and later Irish-Americans who worked the quarries of Texas were very distinct, but both struggled with long hours of gruelling work. Slaves worked long hours in the fields in all types of weather as well as other tasks while the workers in Texas quarried stone and burned lime for long hours year round. Further, around the 1860s or 1870s, perpetual kilns in Texas were manned year round, twenty-four hours a day. The laborers and people of Texas suffered through numerous hazards, such as explosions in the quarries, the smoke and noise of the trains, and fumes and pollution of the kilns.

Second, the conditions of labor of both the slaves and later tenants at Wye and worker’s at Texas were both structured by the wider social relations in which these groups were situated. While the slaves were locked to the land by force and treated as property, workers in Texas were limited by their immigrant status and the availability of work. Though slavery is not comparable to the labor of free workers, the notion that workers were free to choose is also inaccurate. In the nineteenth century, both groups had few options to escape the life into which they were born and so group members spent their lives laboring often in horrendous conditions.

Another connection between Texas and the rural plantation lies in the industry of both locations. Starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, the kilns operated by the people of Texas burned limestone from the quarries to make lime. This lime was used as an agricultural fertilizer to increase crop yields especially as farmers switched from tobacco to other crops such as wheat. A movement towards a more scientific agriculture sought to increase yields and manage and control the production of crops. Similarly, the use of fertilizer is an example of Wye embracing scientific changes in farming practices. We do not have any evidence yet of Texas lime reaching the Eastern Shore though we know it was shipped from Texas to points north and south via the railroad. Perhaps, with some research, we might find a physical connection between Texas and Wye.

As for comparing excavations, I observed that the units being dug by the Archaeology in Annapolis field school differed from our own because they were larger, five feet by five feet or more compared to our own square one meter units. Their units also tended not to be as deep as ours at Texas— perhaps, reflecting the differences in stratigraphy between the two sites. Also, at Texas, we found small pieces of artifacts and only a handful of limestone and brick while at Wye archaeologists uncovered larger artifacts, many bricks, and possible segments of foundations. The number and completeness of these bricks were unlike anything we have found at Texas. Obviously, this disparity reflects their discovery of buildings and other features (aided by Ground Penetrating Radar or GPR) while we have mainly found only artifact scatters.

On the whole, our trip to Wye provided us with the opportunity to see how the same archaeological techniques we learned at Texas and the Irish Shrine can be applied to sites from different temporal and geographic areas. The trip was also a nice break before we headed back to the field for the rest of the week! Thank you to Dr. Mark Leone and the Archaeology in Annapolis Field School.

Katie Cooper
July 5, 2011