Baltimore Talent Development High School students conserving the Carroll’s Hundred artifact collection using new archival materials. Supported by a generous grant from The 1772 Foundation.
Baltimore Talent Development High School students conserving the Carroll’s Hundred artifact collection using new archival materials funded by The 1772 Foundation.

This innovative educational partnership to stabilize and conserve the Carroll’s Hundred 50,000-plus artifact collection began in February 2007, at a Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony at The Baltimore Talent Development High School (BTDHS) in Harlem Park.  U.S. Congressman Elijah Cummings officially kicked off the partnership by participating in the event as our Keynote Speaker. 

The project, supported by a generous grant from The 1772 Foundation, brought in archaeologists from the University of Maryland’s Center for Heritage Resource Studies to train students at the high school to re-label and re-package objects in the collection that had been excavated from the historic landscape over a thirty-year period.

Summer Internships for BTDHS Students

Students participate in the program through their Civic Engagement classes during the regular school year.  Over the summer, selected students continue the conservation project as paid interns.  The program will become part of the BTDHS curriculum as a graded course starting in the fall of 2008.

Conservation Lab

Next steps are to house the entire collection in a conservation research facility that will be equipped with climate control and security features.  The laboratory will be used to store, conserve, and stabilize the collection for research into the history of Carroll’s Hundred.  We will continue using the collection to introduce BTDHS students and others to the field of historical archaeology through hands-on artifact conservation and research projects.

Baltimore Talent Development High School students conserving the Carroll’s Hundred artifact collection using new archival materials. Supported by a generous grant from The 1772 Foundation.
BTDHS students plot a datum point and lay out a grid for an After-School Archaeology Class sponsored by Carrollís Hundred..

Save Our History Continues

One of the few such archaeology programs in the country geared for high school students, the Carroll’s Hundred program continues the educational objectives started with The Black Damask Orchard Restoration in 2006.  At the time, students replanted a four-acre heritage orchard with funding from The History Channel’s Save Our History Program.  The goal was – and is – to involve young people in saving their own community’s history.  Through the Artifact Conservation Project students are saving the important history of cultural diversity at Carroll’s Hundred by conserving its material culture.