Artifacts

LEXINGTON PARK -- To his critics, he was a tax-and-spend autocrat who took frequent junkets overseas and rode roughshod over his constituents. After a coup, Charles Calvert, the only Lord Baltimore ever to live in Maryland, was history.Three hundred years later, there seemed to be little evidence left Calvert's rule. Until now.Archaeologists working on the grounds of an abandoned nursery at Patuxent Naval Air Test Center have found what may be the site of Mattapany (pronounced "mat-a-pan-EYE")

Jacqueline Lanier, who spent a lifetime gathering African-American artifacts and collectibles she displayed and exhibited to schoolchildren, died of a respiratory ailment Wednesday at her Walbrook Junction home. She was 55. Born Jacqueline Ruth Lanier in Roxbury, Mass., she moved to Baltimore in 1954 and was a 1965 graduate of Carver Vocational-Technical High School. As a teen, she taught dance at Lafayette Courts Recreation Center and was an assistant coach of synchronized swimming at the Chick Webb Recreation Center in East Baltimore.

New York - Alex Shear lives in the kind of place where a turn-of-the-century welder's mask looks right at home on a pedestal in the living room and a gas-station display of vintage automotive products is the decorative focal point of the home office.Mr. Shear, a New York marketing consultant and collector, keeps memorabilia like salesmen's models of swimming pools, military panoramic photographs, Coca-Cola artifacts, life-size tin men and hand-painted roadside signs.Mr. Shear calls himself a "broker of nostalgia."

The '50s were long gone before Michael Griffin and Tony Loeffler were even born. Only its artifacts remained.But somehow all that pink and turquoise and chrome touched a chord. Mr. Loeffler says, "We just acquired an appreciation for it."When collecting got out of hand, -- "You can only collect so many tables and pots and things," he says -- they opened Jeepers on Broadway in Fells Point.If you've got a hankering for chrome dinettes, sunburst clocks, pastel beverage sets or giant ashtrays, this is the place.

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES are such a dominant force in the black community that it is easy to forget that they were one of the results of the Americanization process of people of African origin. Most of the slaves who were brought here from the west coast of sub-Saharan Africa were not Christians. They came from tribes with well-developed animistic religions and believed in spirits, good and bad. Conversion to Christianity came in America.It is one of the tragedies of slavery that these ancient religious traditions have disappeared almost without a trace.

With a growing collection of artifacts, the Mount Airy Historical Society is looking for a bigger space in which to exhibit and store mementos of the town's past. The 65-member nonprofit organization, formed in 1998, now exhibits and stores artifacts in donated space in the Mount Airy Town Hall. "We've collected enough artifacts that we're kind of running out of space," said Travis Norwood, the society's president. "We're looking for bigger quarters. We're looking to see what's available."

Drought has uncovered what some are calling the most significant archaeological find in Palm Beach County's recent history. Now researchers are in a race against looters and the weather to preserve it. Since March, state and local archaeologists have been studying and collecting artifacts from various sites around drought-ravaged Lake Okeechobee - places where water has receded from the bank, leaving thousands of acres of mud and muck. Researchers have found human bone fragments, tools, pottery fragments and pieces of ceremonial jewelry thought to have belonged to the natives who lived near the lake before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.

Supporters of a museum honoring Benjamin Banneker are getting help in their effort to keep some of his artifacts in Maryland -- a $50,000 grant to a consortium formed to raise money to purchase the rare items.Friends of the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum, an organization that has pushed for the museum and park project for a decade, hopes to use the grant from the Maryland Historical Trust to secure some of the artifacts before they go on the block at Sloane's Auction House in Bethesda.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The uniform of the first Union officer killed in the Civil War and the flag that draped President Abraham Lincoln's casket when it passed through Albany will be among 10,000 military artifacts housed at a new museum in the National Guard Armory here. Gov. George E. Pataki recently announced the creation of the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center and pledged $1 million to remodel the 31,000-square-foot, 112-year-old armory here. Pataki said he hoped the state money would attract federal and private dollars to complete the conversion into a museum to open next spring.

GREENVILLE, N.C. -- Searching for the first North Carolinians has led Eastern Carolina University Professor Randy Daniel to a Greenville sewer plant. In 17 days of work, Daniel and his crew of students have unearthed artifacts that indicate Native Americans lived along the banks of a Tar River tributary 3,000 and 9,000 years ago. Daniel, an archaeology professor, is leading a five-week field course excavating a wooded area near Barber Creek. Ceramic shards, stone tools, charcoal and bits of animal bone found at two levels in the sandy soil indicate hunter-gatherers visited the area in two prehistoric eras.