In Bucks County, at the former site of an old store, diggers came across six souvenir pins produced during the Spanish-American War in 1898. They show Uncle Sam marching with a backpack and rifle and the words Bound for Cuba, Gosh Darn YER!
It has been a banner year for the region's archaeologists, who put on a daylong show-and-tell at the National Constitution Center Saturday.
The I-95 discoveries have, perhaps, been some of the most rewarding, partly because the highway itself was built before laws requiring archaeological surveys for such projects were enacted.
Uncountable artifacts and unknowable portions of Philadelphia's history were lost when the roadbed was dug through Center City, archaeologists say.
But now, laws are in place to prevent that from happening again. With the widening of I-95 north of Girard Avenue, researchers excavating a thin ribbon of land next to the highway can see far into the past.
"It's a time capsule," said Patrice L. Jeppson, secretary of the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum, a nonprofit organization that cosponsored the event. "It's going right through a whole bunch of neighborhoods."
They've found a pair of 18th-century spectacles in a privy in Kensington.
They've recovered round glass objects called witch balls, meant to ward off evil, in Fishtown.
"It's still early, but the results already are astonishing," said Jed Levin, chief of the history branch at Independence National Historical Park, another event sponsor.
Archaeologists are closely watching two initiatives in Philadelphia - the 2035 comprehensive plan and the master plan for the Delaware waterfront.
Both call for improved preservation of historical resources, but details have yet to be worked out, said Douglas Mooney, president of the forum.
