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| The view! |
It was a beautiful early summer day
and we were enjoying a scenic drive along the Illinois river. Of course we were making the drive more
enjoyable and more scenic by picking up a few caches along the way! A few miles outside of Havana, Illinois we
saw a cache that seemed to fit the theme of our day: GC431TT “Just For The View
Of It.” We quickly turned off the
highway and took the little gravel road that led to the cache. After parking
the car, the first thing we did was to enjoy the view across the Illinois River
valley. From here we could see lush green fields
and the river in the distance…absolutely beautiful!
However, we were soon distracted from the view
by something happening on top of the hill to our left. Looking up, we saw a man standing up under a
tent awning and several nearby tripods with boxes hanging beneath them. As with most geocachers I am
naturally curious so I walked up the base of the hill and shouted up, “If you don’t
mind me asking, what are you doing up there?”
“It’s an archaeological dig!” came the reply. I quickly asked for, and received, permission
to climb up and take a look.
When I
reached the digging site I was greeted by Greg, the team leader. He explained that they were from The
University of California, Santa Barbara as part of the Living with War Archaeological Project. This is the
third year of excavations at this site.
In that time they've found remains of two large structures, probably
council buildings, as well as numerous dwellings, granaries, and fire pits. These remains date back about 1000 years ago
and from two different Native American cultures, the Oneota and the
Mississippian.
As luck would have it, the archaeologists were excavating half of a granary pit that had been backfilled with ancient
rubbish. As I was standing there, the
digger in the pit, Brian, held up a jaw bone that he had just unearthed. They said it looked like a raccoon’s
jawbone. I commented that it looked
pretty new to me, but they said that the composition of the soil here kept
artifacts in surprisingly new condition….even 1000 year old bones!
The picture to the
right shows Brian digging in the granary.
If you look closely in front of him you’ll see pieces of bone, pottery,
utensils and other ancient rubbish, just waiting to be rediscovered and turned
into an artifact!
I could have stayed here all day, but I had to let the diggers get back to
work. Reluctantly I started to
leave but I had one final question. “What do you do with the site after you’re
done,” I asked. I was stunned to learn
that they rebury the site…letting it return to its original use and leaving the remaining treasures hidden below for perhaps future digs and study.
Making new discoveries like this are just one more reason we really dig
Geocaching! (Okay, bad pun, but it fits!)
Note: If you’d like more
information search for “Living with War Archaeological Project”
on Facebook.
