When I created the Baltimore Community Archaeology Lab at Towson University in 2023, it was because Adam D. Fracchia—coauthor of Below Baltimore: An Archaeology of Charm City with Patricia M. Samford—and numerous other archaeologists who have spent decades leading disparate volunteer projects in the city emphasized to me that “in the absence of a sustained and systematic archaeological program and regulations, the archaeological heritage of Baltimore is being compromised” (p. 213). It is telling that only 28 newly identified archaeological sites were recorded in Baltimore City by the State Historic Preservation Office between 2006 and 2016. Even more telling is that only half of those sites were identified through compliance-driven work, whereas the other half were excavated solely for research purposes. This “reflects an overall interest in Baltimore’s archaeology but a lack of regulatory attention to the city’s resources” (p. 31).

Fracchia and Samford’s book is a love letter to the city of Baltimore. With painstaking detail, they have gathered the piecemeal archaeological data collected over the last 150 years, and with it, they paint a picture of a city whose decline is a result not of inevitable deindustrialization and population loss but of choices made consistently throughout history by those in power to maximize profit through the stratification and exploitation of the city’s people and landscape. Their detailed accounts of the lives of those in Baltimore’s marginalized communities provide a sharp contrast to the disinvestment in those same communities by the city’s leadership.

Their book examines the city of Baltimore as an artifact, taking a modern world archaeology approach to interpreting in the interrelated processes and effects of capitalism, colonialism, Eurocentrism, and racialization (p. 9). Because the authors produce an archaeology of urban Baltimore, rather than archaeology of disparate sites in Baltimore, their volume focuses almost exclusively on the time after European contact in the Baltimore area. They acknowledge an extensive Native footprint on the landscape in Baltimore, but other than four short pages in chapter 3, the authors focus on Baltimore as a unit, excluding sites that are spatially coincident with Baltimore but not part of their narrative of urban development.

Below Baltimore is organized thematically, with each chapter focused on a different aspect of Baltimore. Chapter 1, “A City and What Lies Beneath,” focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of their research and provides a brief overview of the role of archaeology in understanding modern cities in general and Baltimore in particular. This segues into chapter 2, “A History of Archaeology in Baltimore.” In this chapter, the authors provide a very brief rundown of the history of archaeology in the United States—from Thomas Jefferson to the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). They then delve into the specifics of Baltimore archaeology, structuring their discussion in two main sections: archaeology in the city and archaeology of the city. The former category is composed of avocational projects sponsored by the Archeological Society of Maryland, the Natural History Society of Maryland, and the Maryland Academy of Sciences, followed by a shift to primarily compliance archaeology after the passage of the NHPA in 1966. The latter category describes the work of the Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology (BCUA), which was sponsored by the city from 1983 to 1997 and was one of the first public archaeology programs ever funded by a major US city. Unfortunately, lack of funding caused the BCUA to close in 1997, leaving a gaping void in the archaeological fabric of Baltimore that persists to this day.

In chapter 3, “Beginnings of Baltimore,” the authors examine the natural setting, pre-European use of the landscape, continuing Native American presence in the city today, and the early years of colonial settlement in the area. This chronological historical narrative is textured with two case studies of life in early Baltimore driven by archaeological data—that of William Noon and his family, who emigrated from England in 1742 and settled in Baltimore Town in 1769 and of John Donnell, an Irish merchant whose household in 1798 consisted of his wife, children, and an enslaved labor force of seven. The authors blend the archaeological and documentary evidence of these families to create vibrant narratives that humanize the historical timeline.

Chapters 4 through 7 represent the thematically organized portion of the book. The authors cover the people, the industry, the built environment, and the food and foodways of Baltimore. All of these chapters are focused primarily of the period from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth century. Chapters 4, 5, and 7 share a similar structure. Each chapter provides an introduction to the theme and the historical and social context and situates Baltimore within the broader landscape of the time. The remainder of each chapter is broken into thematic subsections (e.g., people are broken down into Chinese, Irish, German, Jewish, and African American; industries are broken down into glass, sugar, pottery, canning, brewing, and brickmaking; and food sources are broken down into grocers, butchers, and bakers). As with earlier chapters, the authors draw on specific archaeological contexts to add detail to the overarching historical narrative they produce.

In their final chapter, Fracchia and Samford again use archaeological examples, this time embedded in a larger narrative about the effects of deindustrialization and disinvestment. As they consider the liquor bottles, food wrappers, and drug paraphernalia overlying vinyl record fragments, pearlware, and creamware, they explain that the “continuity of material shows that everyday life of residents at each of these sites was similar, with generations of people striving to live their lives and provide for their families” (p. 209). They advocate for archaeology in Baltimore that tells the history of all of its residents, especially the most marginalized. And they emphasize the importance of cultural resource regulations that prioritize preservation and protection and provide opportunities for public involvement and investment in heritage.

At the end of this book, Fracchia and Samford are careful to remark, “This book is an archaeology of Baltimore, not the archaeology of Baltimore” (p. 213). However, this is the first attempt any archaeologist has made to chronicle the history of Baltimore in a published volume. Fracchia and Samford do the city far more justice than it has received to date.