Just a Pinch! The Cult of the Chesapeake Crab

Lyric Lott, WPAMC ’24

Somewhere along Route 13 on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, I found myself in possession of an intriguing bag of potato chips. The bag had caught my eye during our group lunch stop with its bright colors, zany fonts, and adorable crab cartoon. Upon first sniff, the “Chesapeake crab” flavored chips gave off an aroma of Old Bay that is all too familiar to enjoyers of crab cakes (of which I am one). Yet as I munched away on my short-lived souvenir, I began to wonder: how long has the crab been such a beloved symbol of the Chesapeake region?

Crabs are known today as a ubiquitous part of Mid-Atlantic cuisine, inhabiting seemingly every restaurant in the region in the form of bisques, cakes, and dips. This breadth of dishes comes from the crab’s great abundance in the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States. Crabs thrive in brackish, or slightly salty, water, which occurs in abundance in the bay and has for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. According to Preservation Maryland, records of crab harvesting stretch back to the early seventeenth century, occurring in early European settlements like that of Jamestown, Virginia.¹

With few written records, however, the historical consumption of the crustacean long went understated by archaeologists. While other animals leave behind bones in food waste piles, the delicate exoskeletons of crabs are prone to deteriorating in soil and thus have often been overlooked in historic excavations. However, advancements in archaeological research allowed a recent study to find more than 900 crab remains in sites across the Chesapeake region, including plantations, Indigenous villages, and free Black communities. Dating from the early seventeenth century to the twentieth century, the findings proved conclusively that crabs have been a major food source for Indigenous Americans, African Americans, and Euro-American colonists for hundreds of years.²

These findings demonstrate that crab consumption crossed cultural, economic, and racial boundaries in early America. While it was not until the advent of refrigeration and railroad development in the late nineteenth century that the Chesapeake crab became known outside of its home, the early records of crab consumption in Maryland and Virginia demonstrate that the special crustacean had been a local star for many years before. As archaeologists continue to push the technological limits of their field, such insights into the inherently ephemeral history of foodways provide richer, more nuanced insights into the lived experiences of early Americans of all walks of life. Now that’s a reason not to be crabby.

¹ Preservation Maryland. “National Crabmeat Day: A Look at the History of Crabbing in Maryland.” Accessed September 8, 2023. https://www.preservationmaryland.org/national-crabmeat-day-a-look-at-the-history-of-crabbing-in-maryland/.

² Rick, Torben C. Matthew B. Ogburn, Margaret A. Kramer, Sean T. McCanty, Leslie A. Reeder-Myers, Henry M. Miller, and Anson H. Hines. “Archaeology, Taphonomy, and Historical Ecology of Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs (Callinectes Sapidus).” Journal of Archaeological Science 55 (2015).