Upturned dirt, heavy machinery and work trucks can be spotted just off of Route 1 north of Frederica, but it’s not for road construction.
It's an archaeological dig site with uncovered artifacts dating back to the 18th century.
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Shards of long-forgotten saucers, bowls and plates, dribbled in blues and greens are well preserved, despite generations of farmers tilling the soil over the site.
DelDOT contracted A.D. Marble Company of Pennsylvania to excavate the site on Barratt’s Chapel Road before building service roads along Route 1. The company's crews have been working over the area just outside of Frederica since 2008, stripping away a few inches of topsoil at the roughly half-acre site in their search for buried relics.
Frank Dunsmore, a Field Director for A.D. Marble, says the different layers of dirt themselves can hold important clues about the history of a site, as well as the artifacts themselves.
“The ground is sort of like a layer cake where you have icing, cake, icing, cake. And what we do is we date the layers of the ground by artifacts that we find here. It gives us an idea, roughly of the socioeconomic class of the people that we’re dealing with,” said Dunsmore.
The company thinks a tenant farmer working the land for a much wealthier landowner named John Brown during the mid 1700s could’ve occupied the plot.
But Rich White, another Field Director for A.D. Marble, says that farmer probably didn’t stick around for very long.
“We’re looking at something that’s very ephemeral, something that occurred for a very short period of time and was unlikely to be anything of substantial construction,” said White.
Excavation work will wrap up over the next few weeks, but analysis and lab work needed to draft a final report will take another two to three years.
