Baltimore’s Built Environment

This chapter focuses on what archaeology reveals about the city infrastructure—those systems and facilities that support Baltimore’s overall operations. Wharves, roads, and the rowhouse were all part of the infrastructure that shaped the physical design of the city and its evolution. The chapter pays particular attention to the archaeology of the city’s privies. One of the most scientifically bountiful records of Baltimore residents is the objects they have discarded and left behind, many of them ending up in privies. As most people indiscriminately throw their trash away and the privy was the garbage can of its day, the layers of a privy provide snapshots of life at a particular moment in time.