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The Archaeology in Annapolis (AiA) program represents an archaeological perspective that is important in the US. The sites examined represent a wide range of the population, including slave owning merchants, two signers of the Declaration of Independence, and enslaved and emancipated people of color. Spanning over three hundred and thirty years, the chronological breadth of this research program has provided an important perspective on the birth and development of an important part of the United States, history in Maryland, as well as slavery and conditions of freedom. The program has shown that archaeology is a way of examining the levels of society that include African Americans, women, renters, and wage earners. This archaeological record is a deep and much-used source on the contributions of people through examinations of food, dining etiquette, racist efforts of grocers and city officials, landscape building and use, religion, and the development of religious practices during the earliest periods of slavery through Emancipation and into the present.

The data recovered serve to answer questions on the holding of unequal wealth; concepts of citizenship, survival under Jim Crow, racialization through rules of public health and safety, and gender through workspaces and family conditions. The questions asked and the data gathered are of interest to many fields in the humanities from historical archaeology, material culture studies, historic preservation, and American history. Many of these fields will benefit from a concise and organized presentation of the data and an ability to gain access to the collections online. In several cases already, archaeologists have used the artifact collections and associated records to reevaluate and reinterpret (Beaudry et al. 1991) archaeological sites excavated by Archaeology in Annapolis, resulting in new interpretations and insights that can be extrapolated to other archaeological sites.