The whole site is the artifact: Interpreting the St. John's Site, St. Mary's City, Maryland

Abstract

The St. John's site is located in St. Mary's City on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. St. Mary's City is a 1,500-acre National Historic Landmark that commemorates the founding settlement and first capital of Maryland. John Lewger, the first secretary of the colony, built the main house on the St. John's site in 1638, a mere four years after the founding of the colony. It was one of the earliest major tobacco plantations in Maryland and its "great house" was used repeatedly for meetings of the colonial legislature and governor's council. With many repairs and modifications to extend its life, St. John's stood until ca. 1715. The Historic St. Mary's City Commission, an agency of the state of Maryland, has owned the main area of the St. John's site since the early 1970s. Situated overlooking a tidal pond, the site is completely surrounded by the campus of St. Mary's College of Maryland. St. John's has been investigated by archaeologists on the staff at Historic St. Mary's City (HSMC) since 1972. Excavations have generated over 350,000 artifacts, a group that comprises one of the premier collections of seventeenth-century materials in the USA. Analysis of the site has supported three Ph.D. dissertations, numerous reports, and articles, and provided data for dozens of related studies. St. John's continues to yield new insights into early America as scholars restudy the collections and ask new questions. A Maryland state capital project is creating a major permanent interpretive building that will surround and shelter the ruins of St. John's as well as provide gallery space for exhibiting the artifacts from the site. Architectural and exhibit planning is completed and construction is anticipated to start in 2004. The basic plan for the exhibit will encompass and explain the remains of the main house within a new structure. The exhibit will interpret the archaeology of the site, the role of colonial Maryland in fostering representative government, liberty of conscience, and individual rights, as well as the adaptation of European and African immigrant peoples to the environment of the Chesapeake. This chapter discusses the process of exhibit development and how the archaeology drove the development process. After reviewing the archaeology completed at the site, the steps undertaken to develop the exhibit will be described. Five specific themes will be explored in the nearly 5,000 square foot exhibit. Primary educational areas were outlined by a joint task force of museum staff, college faculty, and an outside educator/facilitator. The subsequent design process involved architects, engineers, exhibit designers, lighting specialists, audio visual experts, and HVAC specialists. The results from focus group information and outside consultants will be presented along with the big "takeaway" messages that the exhibit is designed to impart.