City of Boston Archaeology Program

06/09/2026

We’re almost down to a meter in Trench 1 and it is looking very promising. Beneath the fill of rocks is a dark organic layer that may be redeposited or may be a historic ground surface. Onward and downward! This project is a partnership with Boston National Historical Park and conducted under a federal ARPA permit.

06/08/2026

Happy Monday! Check out this great coverage of our multi-year research project on the residents of Charlestown in 1775 from Archaeology Magazine!

The forgotten lives of the townspeople who lost everything in the early days of the American Revolution

06/05/2026

Trench 1 is crazy rocky while Trench 2 is dirt all the way down so far. Check out the in situ wine bottle base in the floor of Trench 2. We’ve been seeing pieces of this bottle type across the site. Its diagnostic shape lets us know that we are in 18th century soils.

06/03/2026

The 18th century is popping up in Trench 1! We just got a musket ball out the screen and it’s a whopper. The compression banding and ram rod strike tell us it’s been fired, but appears to have struck its target at low velocity since it held its spherical shape.

06/03/2026

Nice coverage of our dig at Bunker Hill from yesterday! We’re full up on volunteers, but come by and say hi!

Archaeologists and veterans are digging at Bunker Hill for clues fr...

06/02/2026

Our first (almost certainly) Revolutionary War artifact has turned up in a historic fill level! This unused or barely used D-shaped gunflint was made from grey English flint. It is a “spall” type which means it was made from a primary flake knocked directly off of a flint nodule, and not made from a pre-prepared flint core.

06/02/2026

Cool artifact alert! What do you all think? Key to the old Bunker Hill museum? Let us know your best guess in the comments! 🗝️

06/02/2026

We’re back at it today! AVAR and Friends of Boston Archaeology are with us so come say hello and see some archaeology in action! We are working our way down to historic ground surface in our search for the remains of the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill redoubt.

06/01/2026

Day 1 at Bunker Hill begins! We’re collaborating with the , , and AVAR - American Veterans Archaeological Recovery - to expose the redoubt built overnight by rebel forces on June 16, 1775. The next day would bring the Battle of Bunker Hill, the bloodiest battle of the Revolutionary War.

We’ll be excavating by the Monument for the next couple of weeks. Come out and say hi!

05/29/2026

We are wrapping up the site at 190 Bowdoin today. This includes documenting, photographing, & backfilling our trenches.

Profiling is when we create a measured drawing of a representative wall/s of the excavation unit to show the stratigraphy of the soil. We use a Munsell color chart to assign standardized soil color designations to our various strata.

In Boston, our A horizon (topsoil) is dark & organic. Our B horizon (subsoil) is split into a darker B1 & older, lighter B2 below it. The C horizon is glacial & predates human occupation in the area.