Below Baltimore provides the first detailed overview of the rich archaeological
heritage of the people and city of Baltimore. Drawing on a combined five
decades of experience in the Chesapeake region and compiling 70 years of published
and unpublished records, Adam Fracchia and Patricia Samford explore the layers
of the city's material record from the late seventeenth century to the recent past.

Fracchia
and Samford focus on major themes and movements such as Baltimore's growth into
a mercantile port city, the city's diverse immigrant populations and the
history of their foodways, and the ways industries--including railroads, glass factories,
sugar refineries, and breweries--structured the city's landscape. Using insights
from artifacts and the built environment, they detail individual lives and
experiences within different historical periods and show how the city has
changed over time.

Synthesizing
a large amount of information that has never before been gathered in one place,
Below Baltimore demonstrates how
urban archaeology can approach cities as larger collective artifacts of the
past, where excavations can uncover patterns of inequality in urbanization and
industrialization that connect to social and economic processes still at work
today.