Once asked to research some tannery remains in Huntington, NY and having 
instead gone to work in NYC I have one archaeological site to report from New 
Jersy, though the remains of US patriots of the American Revolution, 
of "Baylor's Dragoons" were found in it.

How I came by this pamphlet "The Massacre of Baylor's Dragoons September 
28, 1778 Excavation of the Burial Site" the Archaeological Report c) 1968 by 
Wayne M. Daniels, the then Museum Director, Bergen County Historical 
Society, and authored by Freeholder D. Bennet Mazur, and published by 
Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders, is an archaeology story perhaps 
fitting for a Halloween story.

First the historical background of the report: 

"On the evening of September 28, 1778, approximately 120 Dragoons of the 
Continental Army, under the command of Col. George Baylor, were bivouacked 
in six barns and out-buildings along what was then called Overkill Road now 
known as River Vale Road.  These men were attacked by a vastly superior 
force of British troops during the night in which some 54 of the Americans were 
killed or taken prisoner. The incident became known as "Baylor's Massacre."  
An unknown number of these men, reported to be between 40 and 60 were 
alleged to have been buried in tanning vats in the the neighborhood, the 
location of which was lost in history by the removal of the mitone which once 
marked the site."
...
"According to a book on the subject of Tanning operations (footnote 2: 
Tanning Operations in the United States Before 1840; Library of Congress, not 
cited in the Bibliography) of the period, such vats would have had to be 
constructed on the bank of a river or a stream to assure a good water supply, 
since water for the tanning solution had to be lifted from the river by hand. 
The tanning operation itself was usually comprized of three hogsheads sunk 
into the ground, each containing a varying concentration of solution. A fourth 
vat above the surface was for a liming solution to prepare the skins for tanning 
by removing hair and fatty matter. A millstone was employed to grind bark for 
tannic acid and oyster or clam shells for the lime."

The historical research following and the archaeology is excellant, as are the 
colored drawings, maps, photographs, artifacts, human osteological research 
and exploration and one conclusion:

"The attack upon Colonel Baylor's Dragoon's was not a massacre in the 
conventional sense, and perhas it has been misnamed. Certainly documentary 
evidence refering to as many as twenty bayonet wounds in survivors and the 
evidence of the cause of death of dragoon #4 (see: Appendix) indicate that a 
more carefully chosen term might be 'atrocity'."

I was assisting a small "gifted and talented" program in the Huntington Town 
Cemetery, NY for the Christopher Vagts, then Suffolk County Historian and 
School Board member, Rufus Langhans, the Huntington Town Historian, Edward 
Johanneman, Laurie Schroeder and Gaynell Stone, of the Suffolk County 
Archaeological Association, of whch I was a volunteer and participant, when 
we were also assisted by Dr. Gary Corrado, a podiatrist (medicine below the 
knee) who in the recent re-enactments, played Benjamin Thompson, a young 
British officer in charge of British Revolutionary War Fort Golgotha, the remains 
of which we relocated some parts of, it being plowed over after the 
Revolution. It was probably where Nathan Hale was brought before his 
imprisonment and hanging in Manhattan at still unverified location(s). Later 
Benjamin Thompson would be known (perhaps also "gay") as Count Rumford 
the important heat science researcher. 

One of the shallow excavations, 5th and 6th graders in a cemetery, who were 
also shown how to make gravestone rubbings, part of the "local history" state 
curriculum requirements set up then and since in New York, was the recovery 
of a large pin or brooch with the cursive "Q" and "R" overlaid from presumably 
the "Queens Rangers" known to have occupied Long Island, and represented 
by Dr. Corrado, whom I lent the pin for the night to make a copy for his fellow 
re-enactors, who soon would restage the bloodless Sunday morning victory 
over the British Army at the fort in the Manor of St. George on the Great 
South Bay, near the New York signer of the Declaration of Independence, 
William Floyd's Manor, which was also occupied by British forces is said, later 
visited by American federalists.  

The NY SHPO was submitted a report also, by Edward Johanneman, MA, 
perhaps the remains of the entrance to Fort Golgotha found. A former effort 
by so-called "archaeologists" from NYC had upset a few people.

Happy Halloween!