What they found late last year was a rare piece of 17th-century armor called a tasset, which was designed to hang from a breastplate and protect one of the wearer’s thighs during battle.
It had been brought by the first European colonists who arrived in the mid-1600s to establish one of the earliest settlements in what would become the United States.
“The X-ray, everybody went nuts over that,” said Travis Parno, director of research and collections at Historic St. Mary’s City, this month. “… It really just brought the whole thing to life.”