Photo by: Mike Dill, Trenton Times
A $1.1 million archaeological dig that has been under way for months as part of the proposed project to replace the Scudder Falls Bridge has turned up evidence that American Indians lived at the site as long ago as 500 B.C. and as recently as A.D. 1500.
The most “intriguing” pieces of evidence found at the Ewing site “are the physical remains of a large number of hearths,” said John Lawrence, a senior archaeologist with AECOM, a Trenton engineering firm hired by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
The commission owns and operates the bridge, which carries I-95 across the Delaware River between Bucks and Mercer Counties, and it is paying for the dig.
“They are the remains of where the Native Americans would have been cooking food for storage and for daily meals,” Lawrence said.
AECOM is conducting the dig with the New Jersey and Pennsylvania historic-preservation offices to determine if artifacts might be affected by the proposed bridge project, said Joe Donnelly, a spokesman for the commission.
The dig started in October, with 10 people in the field and two in the laboratory. Lawrence said archaeologists should be done digging in Ewing this week. A dig on the Pennsylvania side, in Yardley, is projected to take three or four months. It could get under way within a month, Lawrence said.
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