Surprising finds near Holtec site in Camden

As archaeological teams dug into the earth on Broadway, near where the Holtec International site would soon rise on the South Camden waterfront in early 2015, they expected to find remnants of its past buried in the soil of the industrial tract: debris from the old New York Shipbuilding Corporation, bits of the demolished employee housing that was once there, perhaps pieces that went back further, to the 19th or even 18th centuries.

T&M Associates engineer Mark Stettler said he did not expect the crews would find remnants of tools used by Native Americans long before European settlers arrived in the New World — before the golden age of Greek civilization, before the reign of King David in Israel, and before the earliest known coins are minted in what is now Turkey.

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Arrowheads. Rounded stones, likely used for hammering. Other stones, sharpened to a razor-like edge. Even the remnants of ancient hearths.

In all, nearly 1,300 artifacts were discovered by the time the dig was completed in February.

Archaeologist Ilene Grossman-Bailey, president of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey and a team leader on the dig, said the items date to about 1400 to 1350 B.C.

Paul J. McEachen, a senior archaeologist who works with Grossman-Bailey, said the dates are at the transition between the Late Archaic and Early Woodland periods, specifically the latter end of the Late Archaic period.

Stettler, a city native whose grandfather worked at the old shipyard, said he was surprised when the team from Richard Grubb & Associates (RGA) uncovered items that showed them more digging by trained archaeologists might be warranted.

“The process sort of cascaded from there,” Stettler said. “We were fortunate that little spot had so much.”

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RGA’s team, which included Grossman-Bailey and field supervisor Jennifer Falchetta, was contracted by T&M and arrived in Camden the summer of 2015 to survey the site before construction began, a common practice for large projects or those in areas with any historical significance, Grossman-Bailey explained.

The team looked at historical maps and contemporary accounts to see what the site’s prior uses were; they knew there was the possibility Colonial, 19th- and early 20th-century artifacts might be discovered.

“We never know just what we might find, but in an urban setting like this, it’s still surprising to find such a large, undisturbed area,” she said.

In the initial phase, the team dug test sites, finding stones and a tiny black arrowhead that was between 1,000 to 8,000 years old.

“That was a pretty exciting find,” she said with a smile.

Once they found evidence of stones that had been manipulated into tools, RGA’s team knew there would be more.

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“At that point, we weren’t just digging for artifacts,” Grossman-Bailey said. “We were looking for certain features that might indicate the remains of Native American activities.”

Digging was completed in February; RGA’s team is now in the process of analyzing and cataloging the items they found. The next step is a detailed report to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the Historic Preservation Office. From there, the Historic Preservation Office will make recommendations for the artifacts' placement.

"This is new territory for me," said Stettler. "But we've discussed the need for these items to be preserved in a place where people can see them and learn from them."

Grossman-Bailey, who grew up in Cherry Hill and received her post-graduate degrees at Temple University, said she has “a soft spot for Camden,” the city where her father was born and raised. So for her, it was especially gratifying to discover such a trove of relics.

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The tools they found and the site’s proximity to the Delaware River have led archaeologists to theorize that the site was used as a primitive fishery.

Kimberlee Sue Moran, a forensic archaeologist with Rutgers University-Camden, noted the Delaware River’s place in the history of South Jersey in the pre-Colonial period.

“There were native settlements in New Jersey for thousands of years before European settlers arrived,” she said. “They would have been very well-established, and very sophisticated. The Native Americans there would have likely traded with other tribes in the region, like villages to the north and across the river in Pennsylvania, to get desired materials.

“We tend to forget that this was a very populous area before the Europeans came,” she continued. “There was so much Native American activity here, but the region developed so quickly that once they did that it’s only been relatively recent” — within the past 40 to 50 years — “that any safeguards have been put in place to preserve items found at these sites.”

Remnants of ancient hearths and scattered remains of cooking implements indicated the site’s use for processing and cooking fish; researchers also found unglazed, low-fire ceramic pieces and soapstone, as well as bits of charcoal.

“(Native Americans) would have been fishing along the Delaware, utilizing the forests around them for shelter, watercraft… just maximizing the natural resources,” said Moran. The village "would have been very much a hunter-gatherer type of subsistence, with no large-scale agriculture yet; they would have been living off the land and moving around to follow food source, which is why it’s so unusual to find long-term settlements.”

Grossman-Bailey called it “a total shock” to find so many items so well-preserved and so concentrated in one area, particularly one that had seen so much industrial development.

“This is a lesson in New Jersey archaeology: Even in these kinds of urban settings, there could be the remains of rare sites. Camden has virtually no recorded Native American sites, but given its location along the Delaware, it must have been a very rich environment."

The Holtec development, the reorientation of Broadway, and the artifacts discovered by RGA, Moran said, highlight the need to keep history in mind.

“It’s a struggle to preserve the past while laying down a foundation for the future,” she said.

Phaedra Trethan: (856) 486-2417; ptrethan@gannettnj.com