They are the everyday items of daily life, tossed off or abandoned by people long gone to their graves, that 300 years later have become the stuff of history.

A button, a bottle, a toothbrush and 300,000 other ordinary relics from colonial-era plantation life on the banks of the Potomac are now historical artifacts, to be examined, admired and cataloged by those who take stock of bygone days.

The items are coming home to the place where they were discovered more than two decades ago, the spot beside the river once known as Oxon Hill Manor or the Addison plantation.

Now it is the site of the glitzy new National Harbor mega-development in Prince George's County, and some the best of the artifacts will be put on display there.