Unearthing more Revolutionary history

The metal detector was beeping, and that meant it was picking up an object in the ground.

Was it an artifact from the Battle of Red Bank in 1777? A lead musket ball? A cannonball? A button?

Tim Reno of Toms River, N.J., dug about three inches down and carefully extracted a piece of grooved brass shaped like a bow tie.

The find in National Park had probably been there 238 years, ever since England's Hessian allies massed for an attack on the Americans at Fort Mercer during the Revolutionary War.

Mercer - along with Fort Mifflin on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River - had prevented British ships from supplying the Redcoat army occupying Philadelphia. The Hessians wanted to eliminate it.

But what was the brass item? Reno showed it to David Orr, a retired National Park Service archaeologist, and former Temple University and University of Pennsylvania anthropologist.

"It's a shoe buckle - maybe from some poor Hessian," Orr said.

The area where it was found had been raked by musket and artillery fire. More than 300 Hessians were mowed down by American bullets and later were buried close to the river.

The buckle's rectangular shape had been somehow bent, maybe during the battle.

"Look how long it's been sleeping" in the ground, said Orr, a consultant for JMA, a West Chester firm conducting the archaeological work at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, Gloucester County.

"It's exciting and feels good," said Reno, a member of the Battlefield Restoration and Archaeological Volunteer Organization (BRAVO). "This gets your blood pumping."

On Monday, more than a dozen archaeologists, historians, and volunteers mapped out a grid and began digging into the battleground for clues that would tell them more about the fight and location of the walls of Fort Mercer.

In the morning, they were joined by Salem County middle school students from the Upper Pittsgrove School, who learned about metal detecting, ground-penetrating radar, and the painstaking work of sifting soil in search of artifacts. The dig will be open to the public Wednesday and on June 20.

"The battle lasted about 45 minutes, but this site had a long history before and after the battle," said Wade Catts, JMA's regional cultural director. "We're looking at a single moment in time."

In that brief window, though, a huge number of artifacts were left behind, like evidence at a crime scene. The workers found two musket balls Monday and may also find buttons, buckles, and ramrods.

One volunteer found a metal snuff or tobacco box Monday, but it was unclear what era it had come from. "It's so cool," Orr said. "It could be from the mid-19th century or the 1920s. We don't know."

Across the grounds, in front of a monument marking the battle, historical consultant Robert Selig told students about the clash and the stakes.

If the Americans cut off the flow of supplies, "what happens to the British?" he asked them. They'll be starved out, he said. They'll have to leave without firing a shot.

About 600, including many African Americans, manned Fort Mercer, which was commanded by Col. Christopher Greene, a Rhode Islander. The fort had been reconfigured with a French engineer's help to make it more defendable.

It would be struck by about 1,200 Hessian soldiers, part of a larger force of 2,300 under Count Emil Kurt von Donop, who told the Americans, "If we storm the fort, there will be no quarter given," Selig said.

The defenders rejected calls for surrender and, with help from the artillery fire of American vessels in the river, crushed the Hessian attack. Donop was mortally wounded, along with much of his staff.

"Why is Red Bank so important?" Selig asked. "After a whole series of defeats, we have an American victory. The boost to morale is very, very important."

On Monday, while looking for artifacts, archaeologists also tried to locate the fort's walls and gate.

"The presence of artifacts [in the ground] could mean the presence of a wall," said Jennifer Janofsky, curator of the Red Bank Battlefield Park and Whitall House, and Giordano Fellow in Public History at Rowan University.

Nearby, Kevin Bradley, a JMA archaeologist, was working at an excavation where volunteers were sifting soil through a screen. "The ground-penetrating radar tells you there's something different in the ground," he told students. "It doesn't tell you what it is. You could dig down and find a giant tree root."

Standing in a trench-like depression, Guy DiGiugno ran his gloved hand through soil that was passing through a screen. "This is what it's all about - preservation," said DiGiugno, a volunteer with the Gloucester County chapter of the Archaeology Society of New Jersey.

Other students watched Liz Lavigne, JMA's project archaeologist, run a three-wheeled ground-penetrating radar unit. "You might see layers dipping," she said. "That could mean something has been filled in, or it could be an erosion channel."

Nearby, other artifacts were being recovered. "We got another buckle," Catts said. "And we also had a neighbor [from a property bordering the battle site] bring us some iron canister and a musket ball from his backyard."

The students watched the archaeologists intently. "We learn about this in social studies, but now we're seeing it," said Julianna Evans, 14, of Elmer.

"It's interesting to see what they're digging up," said Patrick McDonald, 14, of Monroeville. "We're standing right where people were killed."