With little to show but enthusiasm, the development staff at the National Constitution Center managed to fund a dream.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

Once a spade unearthed the first body, construction screeched to a halt while archeologists sifted through mounds of dirt and retrieved a million artifacts: bones — both human and chicken — nails, shards of glass and pottery, and other pieces of 18th-century life in Philadelphia. The discovery of the bodies — people from various ethnic backgrounds who, according to city records, lived and worked in the area surrounding the NCC in Philadelphia’s historic district — lead to the largest urban archeological dig ever.