This dissertation examines the role social usage of Maryland's first statehouse played in mediating the formation of both community and socio-political order within this Chesapeake colony during the seventeenth century. This topic is examined through the archaeological study of the Calvert House Site (18ST1-13) in St. Mary's City. Constructed within the first decade of settlement to serve as the governor's house, in 1662 the site was purchased by the Legislature to serve as the official statehouse for the provincial government. At that time the site was renamed the Country's House to reflect its new government function. When the government moved into a new brick statehouse in 1676, the site became a full-time inn until it was abandoned ca. 1700. Scholars have long recognized the inherent connection between community and socio-political order. Without community, order, social discipline and viable government cannot exist. Historical references indicate that early public sites in the colonial Chesapeake provided important venues for communal interaction in a highly diffuse and overwhelmingly rural landscape; it brought individuals from widely scattered plantations together for all manner of business and entertainments during the periodic meetings of the courts and assemblies. This research analyzes ways in which these public interactions articulated within the built environment of the Country's House and how it may have facilitated processes of community formation and integration. Using a combination of distributional and comparative analyses, this research reconstructed the physical contexts of these interactions and associated activities and correlated these material remains with archival data and relevant social theory. Archaeological analysis revealed that special attention was taken to maintain an environment of greater formality at the site during its government tenure, and it was this particular period that saw the greatest intensity of site use. Overall this revealed that the site served as both a significant political center and a vibrant social hub that fostered significant, large-scale social interactions. Public interactions within this context helped facilitate the negotiation and establishment of community, order and early political institutions in seventeenth-century Maryland.