The following highlights from the city's collections reveal the diversity of stories these artifacts can illuminate. Each exhibit includes an overview, suggested further reading, and information about the selected artifacts. Unless noted otherwise, they have been created by the Archaeology Department of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and will be refreshed periodically.
In 2011, an archaeology team unearthed hundreds of artifacts on the west side of Central Park near present-day 85th Street, including the objects pictured below, shown as they were discovered. As the team slowly removed the soil, it became ...
View page02.28.2025
View page
As the cliché goes, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Archaeologists conducting excavations in the early 1980s at the 7 Hanover Square site in Lower Manhattan unearthed the remains of a partially disturbed privy ...
View page10.16.2020
View page
In mid-19th-century New York, Seneca Village was the largest community of free Black property owners. It was first settled in the 1820s in what was then a rural area north of the city’s center located today ...
View page02.18.2020
View page
Smoking was a popular pastime in colonial New York that was enjoyed by everyone-- men, women, and children. As clay tobacco pipes were relatively inexpensive, fragile, and easily replaced, remnants of these artifacts are now found in 17th-19th- ...
View page11.30.2017
View page
Animals have played an important role in the lives of New Yorkers for centuries. Like today, people living during the Colonial and Post-Colonial Eras depended on animals for both food and companionship and the remains of these creatures, called ...
View page11.29.2017
View page
The city's archaeological collections include many animal bones and shells which can tell us a great deal about what people once ate, and what the past environment was like. The following artifacts include: shells and bones of animals ...
View page09.22.2016
View page
The archaeological artifacts in this exhibit illuminate personal and collective stories about food and drink in Colonial and 19th century New York City. They were found in Whitehall Slip, adjacent to Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, in what was ...
View page
As New York City has been part of global trade since the city’s inception in the early 17th century, studying the objects people kept in their homes can reveal important shifts in this trade. The ceramics that ...
View page07.22.2016
View page
Archaeology can reveal very personal information about the lives of the people in the past through the objects that they once used. These artifacts were all found near the Van Cortlandt Manor in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and ...
View page05.20.2016
View page
The following selection of toys date from the late 18th- early 20th centuries and include miniature tea sets and marbles. They were found during archaeological excavations in City Hall Park, Battery Park, and Van Cortlandt Manor. ...
View page05.20.2016
View page