- November 05, 2025
- By Rebecca Moon Ruark
Two-inch tokens being recreated in University of Maryland makerspace labs tell a larger story about the history of Maryland and its tribal communities.
A year after creating 3-D replicas of three silver peace medals that colonists presented to Native leaders in the 1600s and 1700s, the A. James Clark School of Engineering’s Terrapin Works is continuing its collaboration with the Piscataway Tribe, on whose ancestral lands the University of Maryland sits.
Over the summer, the advanced manufacturing and rapid prototyping resource produced nine replicas of the 1652 Calvert Peace Medal, the first one given to Indigenous people by the colonists, according to Piscataway tribal member and historian Mario Harley, who is partnering with Terrapin Works. The medal shows the face of Cecil Calvert, the first lord proprietor of Maryland, on one side and that of his wife, Anne Arundell, on the other.
“The peace medal replicas are a physical remnant that adds credibility to our oral history and allows us to better tell our story from a tribal perspective,” Harley said. “We have been able to go to locations within the state—libraries and cultural organizations—and using these replicas talk about the history of the medals and their national significance.”
David Kriesberg ’16, M.Eng ’19 and Bobby Alban ’25 of Terrapin Works said additive manufacturing—often referred to as 3D printing—allows them to create the unique and complex geometries of the medals with relative ease; they spent 10 hours printing these medals out of a nickel-chromium-based superalloy on a professional-grade metal 3D printer called the ProX DMP.
Harley described the 1652 peace treaty commemorated by the medal as a land cession by the tribe under the auspices of a relationship of collaboration and peace—an “omen for what was to come” in the 1700s and 1800s across North America.
The new batch of medals is bound for the Maryland Heritage Interpretive Center at Historic St. Mary’s City, opening in 2026. The center’s exhibits will include those being designed in collaboration with the Piscataway Conoy Tribe and the Piscataway Indian Nation.
Harley is currently tracking down three additional peace medals identified through ongoing research, which he hopes to have 3D-printed for posterity and educational purposes.