For Lepore, archaeology’s usefulness lies in its ability to convey information about past lives—the kind of intimate details that written documents often fail to communicate. “To the extent that I, as a historian, use archaeological evidence, it’s often things that could tell us about the lives of people that have been preserved in almost no other way,” Lepore says.

By excavating and discovering lost objects, the modern excavator provides a corollary to written records. Frequently, archaeological discoveries complement the prevailing historiography; sometimes, however, information gleaned from newly unearthed artifacts can pose a challenge to entrenched historical narratives.

“Archaeology, especially in the 19th century, which is when it was founded, felt like the unappreciated younger sister of history,” Harvard History Department Chair Daniel L. Smail says. “The people who wrote history in the 19th century thought that the people who wrote history knew the past, and archaeologists really resented it.”

Smail’s remarks help to explain why, for a long time, archaeology was conceived of as a “handmaiden to history.” This somewhat pejorative nickname, coined by early 20th-century archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume, spoke to the notion that archaeology does not provide any new information, but merely shores up what is already known.

This is a notion flatly opposed by Capone. “Archaeology can offer insights that aren’t necessarily apparent through studying documentary information,” she says. “Archaeology is not conducted solely to verify the historical record but may be informed by it.”

A TOUCHING TALE

Despite the advent of modern technology and the ability to have visual information at the click of a button, physical objects still have a great appeal to historians and non-historians alike. The value of the artifacts found in Harvard Yard seems to derive less from objective historical significance than from the feelings they are able to evoke in those who unearth them.

“A physical connection to the past is such a powerful thing,” Capone says, and archaeology and the objects that it unveils can serve as that connection. “Archaeology is an example of an individual physical connection to the past, and hopefully one that we can then share through museum interpretation.”

{shortcode-1834e6b01c6317e6f6e019ba6e9f6a032692056c} 

Historians have long marveled at the power of physically touching objects of the past. It creates a feeling of continuity between the past and the present. “One of the features of archaeological materials in particular is this some sense of immediate contact,” Smail says.

Psychologists have created a name for this sensation.The law of contagion states that a magical connection exists between a person and the object that he has touched. Smail believes that people are attracted to archaeological findings and other historical artifacts because of the connection it allows them to feel between the past and the present.

“When I take my students to handle a medieval object or a 19th-century object from a slave cemetery, it it a completely different experience than reading about it in a book,” Smail says. “The touching of it transmits something into the object.”

This feeling of connection between the past and the present attracts many. However, looking at an archaeological finding from the vantage point of the present also changes the context and meaning of the object. “An object is not only what you are seeing there but also its entire history. So objects carry more meaning that what you might ordinarily assign to them, not only what it has produced but also the memories objects carry,” Ray says. “Objects mean different things in different spaces.”

DIGGING BOSTON

Of course, Harvard is not the only place in the area that is steeped in history. The city of Boston, officially established six years before Harvard, boasts an illustrious historical legacy that the City of Boston Archaeology Program, founded in 1983, is doing its best to protect.