This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 7, 2011 - SIUE students learn by doing as they uncover effigy heads and flint stones on undeveloped parts of the campus. The Archeology Field School is uncovering the day-to-day life of people who lived in a farm village that traded with the big city of Cahokia about 1,000 years ago.
SIUE student Kate Jameruk's last day of ditch-digging and searching for effigy heads and flint stones went as smoothly as possible, "Our professors make it fun, but it can be a lot of hard work."
Jameruk, along with 12 other anthropology seniors, has been conducting archeology research on the Mississippian people and the surrounding areas of Cahokia Creek spread across the campus of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
Mississippian is a general term to categorize Native Americans who lived near the Mississippi River valley and other southern portions of the U.S. before European settlers arrived.
The SIUE Archeology Field School conducts a yearly dig on part of the campus beginning in early May lasting for two months. Selection to the program can be competitive, according to Greg Vogel, assistant professor of archeology, often leaving room only for seniors.
Several students digging around the site say they had to apply several times. They also say their experience has been worth it. Jameruk says she thinks it is a great opportunity.
Vogel says he thinks SIUE's program is unique because it puts undergraduates with professors doing real research. "At most schools, you don't get that type of attention. It's a really great experience for my students and for me, too; it keeps me youthful," said Vogel.
Woodland Period
Julie Holt, chair of anthropology at SIUE, became interested in the current site because of the Woodland Period, which went from 600 BC to 1000 AD.
"I started digging here in 2009," said Holt, who soon got Vogel interested in working with seniors.
"This site is really important because it shows the day-to-day life of people who lived here," Vogel said. "For me, it was important to learn how people interact with each other. For a thousand years, prehistoric people dealt with some of the same kinds of environmental issues that we face today, like flooding and depletion of land," said Vogel.
"We don't know how they settled here originally, but we do know that this is an historic gateway junction area," said Holt.
The purpose of the dig is to help reveal some of the ancient past that the tribes had in common with each other.
"This is too old for us to give a tribe home a name so we categorize them with the Mississippian people; I'm more interested in trying to find out about the Hopewell people," Holt said, explaining that Hopewell people gathered, hunted and built farms and appeared in this general area approximately 2,000 years ago.
Vogel said, "One of the earlier tribes that we can find is in the Paleo-Indian period, in which people hunted Kimmswick Mastodons or ancient elephants." Those people settled 20 to 25 miles south of St. Louis near what's now Imperial around 12,000 years ago.
Of their research site, Vogel said the Woodland people starting inhabiting what is now the SIUE campus almost 1,000 years ago.
"You can think of Cahokia as a big city. (Our area is) a small farm village that traded crops with Cahokia," said Vogel.
The Native Americans of the Mississippean period did long-distance trade with Cahokia, the center of local trade.
Although 2,000 years of farming had altered the landscape, Vogel said Southern Illinois University Edwardsville had initially allowed farming along with doing research.
But after years of erosion, the university decided to stop the cycle of plowing, planting and harvesting. Instead, it decided to put prairie grass on those sites, still allowing research.
Research Can Be Tiresome
"The crew works well together. We dig holes and push soil through wire mesh; once the soil pushes through the hole, you have to fill it back in," said Jameruk.
Students agree that people have to be prepared for hard work when going on a dig, especially in the summer. Each dig consists of 8-hour days, up to five days a week.
Andy Mell, a student from Granite City, thinks their last day was good -- as far as insects are concerned, "This is a light day; the flies can be really bad on other days."
According to teaching assistant Steve Greenleaf, the student researchers have been digging long enough to know there are no more surprises that can jump out at them.
"I believe that we're really doing something here," said Greenleaf.
Toward the end of this project, Vogel and Holt talked about the ability to build relationships with their students while giving them the opportunity to work outside of the classroom.
"That's the one important thing about the field school, if you work with students 40 hours a week for two months in the American Bottoms doing physical labor, you get to know the students," said Vogel.
Ray Carter, a student at Purdue University, is a Beacon intern.