If you’ve walked through DeKorte Park’s Lyndhurst Nature Reserve and come across the plots in the photo above, you’ve probably wondered what they are.

Wonder no more.

Sue Lewicki of the Meadowlands Environment Center says: “These are our practice archaeological dig pits for our field trip program entitled ‘Peek at the Past.’  Students are introduced to Meadowlands history through maps and artifact study.

“We have a collection of artifacts from early 20th century in the Science Building, but, weather permitting, students are also introduced to proper dig techniques (it’s a lot more “scraping” than digging) and we used the gridded pits to organize teams in unearthing their own specimens.

“We never really are sure what contributions people have shoved in the soil recently, but occasionally the student haul up something that we didn’t plant and that’s genuinely been in the load of soil (who knows where it came from) for a long time – the 1950s Mountain Dew bottle with the hillbilly was my favorite (‘It’ll Tickle Yore Innards’ – they just don’t write catch phrases like that anymore).”