Archaeologists digging in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston have confirmed the layout of an earthen fort built by American patriots on the eve of the Battle of Bunker Hill, recovering musket balls, gun flints and parts of a musket from a 1775 ditch in what is now the monument’s grassy park in Charlestown. The team, led by Joe Bagley, Boston’s city archaeologist, said Monday that the find marks the first time anyone has matched the site to a centuries-old map drawn two months after the fighting.
Guided by ground-penetrating radar and by the Pelham map, the team began trenching this month. Soon after opening the first trench, they found definitive signs of a ditch constructed hours before the June 17, 1775 engagement — one of the first major battles of the American Revolution.
“The part that’s really crazy to me is that we get to stand in the same ditch,” Bagley said, standing over one of the two dig sites, where soil is removed about 4 inches (10 cm) at a time, put in buckets and filtered through screens. Any items found are bagged up and identified.
So far, the dig has yielded musket balls, parts of a musket and gun flints. The team has also recovered objects apparently left behind by British troops who occupied the area after the battle — teacups, tobacco pipes, sleeve buttons and a wig curler. Nearly 150 combatants died at the site, but no human remains have been found; forensic anthropologist Sarah Kiley Schoff is on site to identify any bones that surface.
“Everything about the ditch is from 1775,” Bagley said. “You’ve got musket balls, gun flints. It’s what you would expect to see. It’s pretty powerful because these things are being dropped in the middle of the battle.”
The start of the American Revolution is often associated with the Battle of Lexington and Concord, fought April 19, 1775, but many scholars cite Bunker Hill as the war’s first significant battle. The patriots had intended to fortify Bunker Hill, a 110-foot (34-meter) slope in Charlestown across the Charles River from British-occupied Boston, but for reasons still unclear they instead took a position on a smaller, more vulnerable ridge known as Breed’s Hill, where most of the fighting occurred.
The battle ended with the rebels in retreat, but not before British forces sustained more than 1,000 casualties. Bunker Hill is often portrayed as an American victory because the British failed to win decisively and the engagement helped galvanize the colonies against the British.
Today, a 221-foot white obelisk atop Breed’s Hill memorializes the battle. A church service in Charlestown on Wednesday will be followed by a procession to the monument, where a remembrance ceremony is to include a wreath-laying, moment of silence and musket-firing demonstration. The dig also ends on Wednesday.
At the dig site, Joel Bohy, a battlefield archaeologist who specializes in identifying American Revolution weaponry, marveled at what had been pulled from the dirt. One volunteer held in her hand two jagged stones — a gray one identified as an English gun flint and a beige one as a French gun flint. When the trigger on a musket was pulled, the flint struck steel, producing sparks that ignited the gunpowder.
The team also found eight marble-sized musket balls from both sides in the battle. The markings and shape of some bullets showed they had been fired from a distance but did not hit anyone; balls that struck a target would have been deformed.
“You can see the ramrod mark from when the soldier rammed it down. You can see the little ring on the top where it was pushed down,” Bohy said, adding that “marks on the edge of the ball” show that it had been fired.
Working through the night with pickaxes and shovels, more than 1,000 provincials and Boston residents dug a ditch that was 3 feet deep and more than 6 feet wide. They shoveled the soil in front of the ditch to make a 6-foot-high wall, or parapet, that reached 150 feet long on each of the four sides.
Pelham’s map showed a square redoubt on Breed’s Hill, but no previous excavation had confirmed the shape was accurate. Digs in the 1990s had recovered items related to the battle and some evidence of the ditches.
“If you come to the site, we have the monument, we have a lot of maps on display, and the landscape is beautiful. But you can’t really see the fort, the fortifications that were built,” Bagley said. “Very little of what’s here visibly is from 1775. So, this trench is the reason why all of this is here.”
Beyond locating the fort, the dig also gives visitors a chance to hold “a piece of the battle in their hand,” Bohy said. “In a way, it makes the history more dimensional when you look at these objects from the battle itself.”
Several tourists from Colorado stopped by to watch the dig. One, Greg Nockleby, who had spent a week in Boston learning about American history, said watching the archaeologists at work was a “wonderful surprise.”
“A live dig happening right now to uncover our nation’s history is amazing,” he said. “To see that there has been people here who have died for our freedom and our nation is very immersive.”