Historic Philadelphia has long yielded archaeological treasures from its past. Excavations required by the National Historic Preservation Act have recovered pottery shards, pots, plates, coins, bones, and other artifacts relating to early life in the city. This updated edition of Digging in the City of Brotherly Love continues to use archaeology to learn about and understand people from the past.

Rebecca Yamin adds three new chapters that showcase several major discoveries from recent finds including unmarked early eighteenth-century burial grounds, one of which associated with the first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, in the oldest part of the city; a nineteenth-century working-class neighborhood built along the path of what is now Route I-95 and was once home to Native American life; and the remains of two taverns found on the site of the current Museum of the American Revolution.

Yamin describes the research and state-of-the-art techniques used to study these exciting discoveries. In chronicling the value of looking into a city’s past, Digging in the City of Brotherly Love brings to life the people who lived in the early city and the people in the present who study them.

Rebecca Yamin is a historical archaeologist specializing in urban archaeology and the former director of the Philadelphia branch office of John Milner Associates, Inc., a company that specialized in historic preservation and cultural resource management. She is the author of Archaeology at the Site of the Museum of the American Revolution (Temple), which won the 2022 James Deetz Book Prize given by the Society for Historical Archaeology; Rediscovering Raritan Landing: An Adventure in New Jersey Archaeology; the co-author of The Archaeology of Prostitution and Clandestine Pursuits; and the co-editor of Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical Landscape.

Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Acknowledgments to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments to the First Edition
CHAPTER ONE
Beneath the Symbolic Surface
CHAPTER TWO
Hudson’s Square: The Middle Block of Independence Mall
CHAPTER THREE
An Icon and an Icehouse: The First Block of Independence Mall
CHAPTER FOUR
Artisans in a Changing World
CHAPTER FIVE
“We the People”: The Free Black Community, Native Americans, and the Celebration of the Constitution
CHAPTER SIX
Life and Death in the Nineteenth-Century City
CHAPTER SEVEN
On the Waterfront
CHAPTER EIGHT
An Archaeological Walk in the Eighteenth-Century City
CHAPTER NINE
An Archaeological Walk Through Nineteenth-Century Neighborhoods
CHAPTER TEN
The Struggle to Do Justice to Philadelphia’s Historic Burial Grounds
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Life
CHAPTER TWELVE
Archaeology and the Making of the Museum of the American Revolution
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Legacy of William Penn and the Power of the Past
Notes
References
Index