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ST. LOUIS, MO (KPLR) -
Officials with the Mississippi River Bridge project say work in the river will begin in about a week. But a different kind of digging has been underway for several months. This turning of dirt has nothing to do with construction and everything to do with history. The area where the bridge is going in will be the site of one of the nation's largest archeological digs. Some digging has already been done. On the Illinois side of the river, artifacts that are about 1000 years old have been found along with dozens of ancient homes. And there' more digging to do.
"We have been finding a lot of prehistoric houses that date to the Mississippian period at the same time Cahokia was founded and started to grow," Dr. Joe Galloy of the Illinois State Archeological Survey told us. "We've only dug a small fraction of the impact area."
On both sides of the river, homes and businesses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries have drawn quite a bit of attention.
"There are several things that are typically not recorded about daily life, particularly the daily lives of people who are not rich and powerful," Galloy says.
Some work was done last Summer, and officials have spent the cold weather months going through what's been collected.
"We will preserve those artifacts and document that in a very detailed," MoDOT Engineer Ed Hassinger says. "That's part of the federal requirement any time we do a project that requires federal money."
Once everything is documented and artifacts collected, construction crews will be allowed to cover up what's left, but researchers say that nothing is lost in that process.
"We have been finding a lot of prehistoric houses that date to the Mississippian period at the same time Cahokia was founded and started to grow," Dr. Joe Galloy of the Illinois State Archeological Survey told us. "We've only dug a small fraction of the impact area."
On both sides of the river, homes and businesses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries have drawn quite a bit of attention.
"There are several things that are typically not recorded about daily life, particularly the daily lives of people who are not rich and powerful," Galloy says.
Some work was done last Summer, and officials have spent the cold weather months going through what's been collected.
"We will preserve those artifacts and document that in a very detailed," MoDOT Engineer Ed Hassinger says. "That's part of the federal requirement any time we do a project that requires federal money."
Once everything is documented and artifacts collected, construction crews will be allowed to cover up what's left, but researchers say that nothing is lost in that process.
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