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An .Archaeological Context for St . Mary ' s Road Corridor, Orange County , North Carolina Linda F . Stine and Thomas Hargrove September 20th, 1999 . Introduction The archaeological reconnaissance survey of the St . Mary ' s Road Corridor ( SRI002) came about due to the desire of the people of Orange County to help record and preserve the historical and rural character of St . Mary ' s Road (Figure 1 ; Orange County Environment and Resource Conservation Department 1999) . Over the last decade a series of initiatives in Orange County instigated by citizens and local government officials have resulted in development of an Orange County Comprehensive Plan, including a Preservation Element (Jaeger et . al. 1996 ; see also Stancil 1999 and Environment and Resources Protection Committee 1998) . County residents repeatedly noted that the historic structures and viewscapes along historic St . Mary' s Road formed an important part of Orange County' s joint heritage . The St. Mary' s Road Corridor, tentatively extending from that road ' s intersection with N . C . Highway 70 eastwards to the Orange and Durham county lines, was recommended as a "proposed scenic corridor" (Jaeger et. al. 1996 : 3 ; Shifter 1996) . Orange County is using a landscape perspective to create a preservation plan for the St . Mary ' s Road Corridor (Belk 1999 ; Orange County Environment and Resource Conservation Department 1999) . A landscape approach is an integrative study of how people shape, and are "shaped by the land in dynamic cultural and natural contexts . A landscape approach in preservation guides interdisciplinary research and evaluation of historical properties . . . [and] fosters a regional perspective for evaluating and managing a project ' s historic properties" ( Stine and Stine 19970. 189) . In 1998 Orange County received a National Park Service Survey and Planning Grant through the Certified Local Governments program (administered by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources) to help develop a St. Mary ' s Road Corridor Preservation Plan. The purpose of this plan is to "identify the important architectural, archaeological, and cultural features that distinguish the corridor as a historically significant landscape in Orange County" ( Orange County Environment and Resource Conservation Department 1999 : 2) . This preservation plan will be predicated on results of a separate architectural survey of the standing structures in the project area (Henry 1999) and on the results of this project, the archaeological investigation of the St . Mary' s Road Corridor (Belk 1999 ; Orange County Environment and Resource Conservation Department 1999) . As part of the archaeological investigation of the 'corridor, archaeologists were asked to accomplish three major tasks . Task one was to complete a background literature search of relevant North Carolina State archaeological site files , cemetery files, and the 1