Revolutionary War battlefields often romanticize combat, but this mass grave just outside Philadelphia shows the violence soldiers actually experienced

A casting made of human remains discovered in an excavation site at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in Gloucester County, N.J. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

“I think I found a bone.”

A volunteer whispered that to us on the last day of a public archaeology project at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in southern New Jersey in June 2022. Over the course of four days, dozens of volunteers worked under the supervision of trained archaeologists and other professionals to dig, sift and identify artifacts at the site of the Battle of Red Bank on Oct. 22, 1777.