Throughout the challenging year of 2020 Hunter Research staff have continued working at the William Trent House, Trenton’s founding National Historic Landmark property at the Falls of the Delaware. Back in the spring, working with Monmouth University faculty and students, we completed an interim report on the 2019 field school which produced exceptionally promising Native American, Contact period and early colonial remains in a well-preserved and surprisingly deep soil sequence. In July, with the assistance of soil scientist John Stiteler, we conducted a systematic program of soil augering over the 1.59-acre core of the property, the informative results of which will help us plan for future field investigations. Toward the end of the year, the Trent House Association learned that it had been successful in gaining a New Jersey Historic Trust grant to support another summer field school for undergraduate and graduate students in 2021, to be run by our staff and Monmouth University professors Richard Veit and Adam Heinrich.
Concurrently, Hunter Research has been partnering all year with Trenton-based architecture and landscape consultants Clarke Caton Hintz in producing an updated buildings and site preservation plan for the Trent House property. Our charge has been to write a new history of the site and provide a reasoned assessment of its archaeological potential based on a quarter century of archaeological explorations. This document, also funded by the New Jersey Historic Trust, is in the final stages of completion, and will guide the preservation and interpretation of this superior historic property well into the future.
