Team digs up Delaware's past

The edge of the trowel scrapes through the dirt – scrfft, scrfft – as Terri Lottmann kneels in a small hole, peering at a mound of white chunks emerging from the ground.

Pieces of red brick, shards of oyster shells and a hunk of bone protrude out of the dark, moist dirt.

It looks like a pile of old buried trash – and that’s exactly what it is: 17th-century debris, used to fill in an old cellar.