Al Luckenbach and Jim Gibb are looking for the town that isn't there.
The two Anne Arundel County archaeologists spent a recent day tramping through freshly plowed tobacco fields near Deale, and scouting nearby stream banks and hillsides, in search of Herrington -- another of Anne Arundel County's "lost" Colonial towns.
Their quarry was that shard of crockery or 17th-century pipe stem that would signal the presence here, more than 300 years ago, of a bay-side hamlet that flickered feebly for a few decades, then vanished.
"It's at least the second-oldest town in Anne Arundel County, and the mysteries about the place are numerous," Luckenbach said. "We don't even know how it was founded, or when, or how big it got to be."
The search is part of the county's "Lost Towns of Anne Arundel Project," which has turned London Town -- a vanished 17th- and 18th-century tobacco port on the South River -- into an archaeological park and tourist attraction.
In 1994, "Lost Towns" archaeologists also discovered the buried traces of Providence, an enclave of Virginia Puritans in Catholic Maryland. Built on the north side of the Severn's mouth in 1649, Providence was the foundation for Annapolis across the river but disappeared in the new capital's shadow after 1695.
"The documents tell us next to nothing about what life was like in the 17th century, and next to nothing about these towns," Luckenbach said. "The only way to do it is with a spade."
Unlike 17th-century towns such as Plymouth, Mass., which survived into the 20th century, short-lived places such as Providence and Herrington provide archaeologists with nearly pure "snapshots" of life in the 17th century. The broken pottery, bones and home sites can speak volumes about a 17th-century community's wealth, economy, environment and contacts with Europe and Indians.
The most remarkable thing about the Lost Towns project is that it exists at all.
Arundel has long had the state's strictest archaeological conservation laws.
Builders must conduct archaeological surveys on land they plan to develop. If a significant site is found, the developer must either pay for its excavation, or redraw the plan, if necessary, to protect it.
More recently, however, Arundel archaeology has blossomed, thanks to the political support of County Executive John G. Gary, who took office in 1994. "I believe we need to preserve our history. Once you've lost it, you've lost it forever," he said. "Economic development and other types of development are very important. But they [developers] can afford to work in a partnership with our historic people."
