DES PLAINES (AP) – A 10-person crew of archaeologists and interns are digging for historic artifacts along the Des Plaines River in suburban Chicago.
“There’s hardly any property left in Cook County where we could find out this information about past life ways and how they used the land and their subsistence strategies,” Jenny Benish, a staff archaeologist with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, told the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald.
The project is being run with The Prairie Research Institute’s State Archaeological Survey, the Illinois State Water Survey, and the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
The archaeologists recovered settlement sites in the southern suburbs of Chicago earlier this year. Now, they’re they working along the river in northwestern Cook County.
The forest preserve has about 550 archaeological sites that span the first paleo hunter gatherers to periods around World War II, Benish said.
“The whole of the human habitation is represented in these sites that have been protected from urbanization,” she said.
Lauren Fitts, also a staff archaeologist with the Illinois Archaeological Survey, found a piece of ceramic pottery dating back about 1,000 years when she was clearing land along the river.
“As you’re looking and you see a little piece of something, you get kind of excited, but you’re not always sure if it’s going to be something or not,” Fitts said. “So when you pick it up and start wiping the dirt off it, you can tell it’s pottery, that’s exciting.”
When pieces are found, the crew puts them through a washing, labeling and identification process.
The work is part of the forest preserve’s Natural and Cultural Resources Master Plan released last year.