Claggett Retreat Site 23 May - 2 June 2008 Dr. Joe Dent of American University at Frederick County Claggett site field session in 2007. Claggett Site Field Session The first year’s effort demonstrated that the Claggett site is a single component Mason Island site, the only such site known in Maryland. Single component sites are highly valuable because the materials and features all represent one moment in time; are not intermixed with other time periods. This highly significant site can fill a huge gap in our knowledge of this Late Woodland culture, including examination of what are thought to be individual family habitation areas from the Late Woodland period. To begin, only the general location of the Claggett Retreat site was known to us before the field session. In early May, Maryland Historical Trust archeologists and I spent a day excavating shovel test pits in an effort to locate the site’s exact boundaries. Ample amounts of Mason Island ceramics and lithic material were encountered slightly northwest of where we ultimately concentrated our excavations. We started at that location for the first couple of days and were recovering artifacts, but not in great quantity. This brings us to the Calvin Swomley story. Swomley had located and excavated at Claggett Retreat in 1964. There, however, had been little contact with him since the late 1970s. In the heat of one lunch break, two ASM members, Antonella Bassani and Alex McPhail, decided this would not do. They quickly initiated a missing person search in nearby Buckeystown, determined that Swomley still lived in the area and showed up on his doorstep. To make a long story short, Swomley was enlisted to visit the site. In a now-famous phone call from Antonella at the top of the hill to excavators in the field, we were graciously informed that we were digging in the wrong place. Swomley walked the field with us all, bringing along his original 1964 map of the 28 features he had investigated. By close of business that day, we shifted our excavations to the southeast about 100 yards. Hey, it’s not a perfect science. With renewed vigor we opened many more new units and two long trenches. The latter were efforts to locate any palisade that may have been present. What did we discover? A large buried water pipe that ran the length of one of the trenches. We also discovered that the site appears very different from either Winslow or Hughes, the last two prehistoric sites ASM has investigated. At this point I would have to argue it is more of a small, dispersed settlement than a more nucleated village like Winslow and Hughes. It appeared to me that known features were focused in three or four clusters that possibly could represent house sites scattered across the site. This would be consistent with a dispersed community. Artifact densities are substantial, but less than at many other village sites. It stands to reason that three to five families would leave behind less debris than a whole nucleated village. In the same sense, features and postmolds are sparse. Some may find this disheartening, but I now see Claggett Retreat as a new and very interesting type of site, a unique artifact of the earliest phase of the introduction of agriculture and more settled life in the region. And a kind of site that has not yet been investigated. Field Session Registration Claggett Site Registration Form Lodging Information Registration for the 2008 Field Session season is now open. Costs for registering will remain at last year's low, low price of $10 per day for ASM members and $15 per day ofr non-members. As mentioned above, there is a cap of $30 for ASM members and $45 for non members. This price will include BOTH field sessions with a total of 22 days of activities available. Due to constaints levied by landowners, pre-registration is required for the Claggett site and highly recommended for the Port Tobacco site. Walk-on registration is possible at Port Tobacco, but knowing how many workers to expect makes planning much easier for the principal investigator and staff. Fieldwork will run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Orientation for new participants will take place at about 8 a.m. and again at about 1 p.m. each day as well. In addition to registration, a liability form and photo waiver is required from each participant. Registration forms, with the waiver can be obtained by clicking on the links below and printing out the forms. Please complete a form for each field session that you intend to attend. Registration should be received by our registrar, John Fiveash, no later than 19 May 2008 for the Claggett Site field session and 9 June 2008 for the Port Tobacco Site field session. Lodging and camping information, along with a list of items to bring, will be posted soon.

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