Archeologists Jason Shellenhamer and Lisa Kraus took their expertise home, applying it to their neighborhood park to see what stories were hiding under the surface.
"As my co-director likes to call it, we basically do a large battleship game, where we are excavating holes on a grid and when we find something we basically work around that in order to essentially sink our battleship or identify our site, " Shellenhamer said.
The first site they discovered was the home of a wealthy flour merchant, named William Smith.
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He had a mill down by the river, and a home called Eutaw Manor, that burned down at a Christening party in October of 1865.
"All of their artifacts, all of their materials, their personal items, their dishes, their glassware, their furniture gets trapped in the house and that's been left for us to find," Shellenhamer said.
Over three years they've discovered more than 12,000 artifacts, giving them a window into the past.
"This site was also the home for up to about 3 or 4 dozen enslaved African American men women and children... these are two pulleys for windows...a doll's foot, a ring, straight pins, hair pieces, some marbles, actually toy marbles," Shellenhamer said.
