Archaeologists find musket balls and fort linked to Battle of Bunker Hill

Dig at Boston site reveals ammunition intriguing finds from 1775 clash that launched revolutionary war in earnest

Generations of Boston families played and picnicked on the grassy, sloping lawns of the Bunker Hill Monument.

Musket balls and other artifacts from one of the American Revolution’s most consequential battles were buried just below their feet the whole time.

Inspired by a centuries-old map, archaeologists have been digging in the park that sits on the site where American patriots hastily constructed an earthen fort to slow advancing British forces at what became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Ground-penetrating radar identified potential locations for the fort in Boston’s Charlestown section. Soon after digging the first trench, the team led by Joe Bagley, the city of Boston’s archaeologist, found definitive signs of a ditch constructed hours before the battle on 17 June 1775, one of the first of the American Revolution.

“The part that’s really crazy to me is that we get to stand in the same ditch,” said Bagley, standing over one of the two dig sites, where soil is removed about 4in (10cm) at a time, put in buckets and filtered through screens. Any items found are bagged up and identified.

So far, the dig has uncovered musket balls and parts of a musket from the battle. They also found objects probably left behind by British troops who occupied the area after the battle – including teacups, tobacco pipes, sleeve buttons and a wig curler. Nearly 150 combatants who died there but no human remains have been found, though a forensic archaeologist is on site to identify any bones.

“Everything about the ditch is from 1775. You’ve got musket balls, gun flints. It’s what you would expect to see,” Bagley said. “It’s pretty powerful because these things are being dropped in the middle of the battle.”

The start of the American Revolution is often associated with the Battle of Lexington and Concord, skirmishes fought on 19 April 1775. But many scholars cite Bunker Hill and 17 June as the war’s first significant battle.

Rebels intended to hold off a possible British attack by fortifying Bunker Hill, a 110ft-high (34-meter) slope in Charlestown across the Charles River from British-occupied Boston. But for reasons still unclear, they instead took a position on a smaller and more vulnerable ridge known as Breed’s Hill, where most of the fighting took place.

The battle ended with the rebels in retreat, but not before the British had sustained more than 1,000 casualties. Bunker Hill is often portrayed as an American victory, since the British fa