During the fall semester (Sept-Dec 2018), students from Bryn Mawr and Haverford helped to clean and catalogue the remains at Rutgers-Camden as part of a praxis course led by Professor Maja Šešelj. The following post if from one such student --- Bryn Mawr student Elizabeth McGuire.
By Elizabeth McGuire, Bryn Mawr College
When anthropologists examine human skeletal remains, they can tell a lot about... Read More
Over the summer, the Arch Street Project team was busy cleaning human remains. The work was spread over three sites: The College of New Jersey, Rutgers-Camden, and the basement of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (home of the Mütter Museum and Mütter Research Institute). Quite a few students and volunteers worked with us on this monumental task. The following post is from one such volunteer - Haotian Cao, a student from... Read More
Over the summer, the Arch Street Project team was busy cleaning human remains. The work was spread over three sites: The College of New Jersey, Rutgers-Camden, and the basement of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (home of the Mütter Museum and Mütter Research Institute). Quite a few students and volunteers worked with us on this monumental task. The following post is from one such volunteer - Leah Strayer, a student from... Read More
A 19th Century Map of the Arch Street Project excavation site reveals that a felt hat factory was later built on top of part of the original cemetery. The map cites the owner as “P. Hirst and son”. Subsequent archival research by the team’s principle historian, Nick Bonneau, has revealed that the hat factory owner was actually P. Herst and that the factory only... Read More
Cleaning the bones of the adult male from grave G-155 of the Arch Street Project provided us with a fascinating window into what life would have been like for someone living in the 1700s or early 1800s in Philadelphia. The image here shows the left and right tibiae from this individual, and it is easy to see that they are not the same. The tibia on the top is normal, whereas the tibia on the bottom shows evidence of a break or fracture in the bone which has subsequently healed.... Read More
