Smack-dab in Dakota County's Spring Lake Park Reserve, a team of archaeologists huddled around a shallow trench last week, analyzing a dark area of packed soil.
To Ron Schirmer, an associate professor of anthropology at Minnesota State University, Mankato, the soil looked charred — perhaps by people who lived there as far back as 2,000 years ago.
"It's a start of a fire pit of some sort," he said, "and it probably wasn't needed for very long."
Using a sharp trowel, Schirmer unearthed a stone flake that, at a quarter-inch in size, certainly would have gone unnoticed to the untrained eye. He plucked it from the dirt and concluded it was most likely the byproduct of creating or sharpening a stone tool.
"Once you have your nose in the soil for a while, you start noticing things like this," he said.
Led by the Science Museum of Minnesota, the excavation at Ranelius, named for its former landowner, is part of a six-month research project. Through the dig, which began July 5 and ends this week, researchers hope to shed more light on when the Spring Lake region was occupied, who was there and how it was used over time, said Ed Fleming, the Science Museum's curator of archaeology.
When finished in September, scientists also expect to have a better understanding of the Mississippi River's importance to the people living along it from about 700 A.D. and 1400 A.D.
Fleming said the dig, on a terrace overlooking Spring Lake, has turned up several shards of pottery dating back 2,000 years, a small triangular arrowhead from a period no earlier than 800 A.D. and chipping debris from making stone tools and large knives or wide spear points, Fleming said.
"So it was a terrace that was used periodically for a long time but never intensively," he said.
Archaeologists also are analyzing an artifact collection and field notes from the Science Museum's mid-1950s dig at another part of the site. For reasons still unknown, Fleming said, museum staff never fully analyzed the collection, which fills two small boxes, or wrote a detailed report as they did with other Spring Lake dig sites.
"This is a completely under-analyzed collection — it was dug and then put on the shelf," Fleming said. "We know some things about the site, but most of it is still a mystery."
With the exception of a popular gathering center atop Schaar's Bluff, the nearly 1,200-acre park in Nininger Township near Hastings mostly has been untouched by Dakota County.
The park's prehistoric aspect is not widely known, said Bruce Blair, manager of facility and natural resource development for Dakota County parks.
"Even the parks department isn't fully aware of what we are stewards of," Blair said. "So we're interested, to put it mildly, to see what this project reveals."
Archaeologists are looking for signs and leftover artifacts of American Indian ancestors who lived in settlements along the bluffs overlooking Spring Lake, which was then a large marsh along the Mississippi River.
"Many years ago, this was a great place to live," Fleming said, adding that the river offered plenty of resources and convenient transportation.
Much of what they left behind was submerged in water when the Hastings Dam was built in the 1930s. Over time, moving water and freezing eroded the shoreline, exposing a treasure trove of remnants from the past, Fleming said.
As a young boy in the 1940s, Ken Klink would walk the shore, picking up whatever caught his eye. His family lived in St. Paul but had a cabin near the lake.
"I used to collect rocks in grade school, and the next thing I know I was finding copper nuggets that were carried down from a glacier and finding arrows, pieces of pottery, stone hammers, you name it," said Klink, now 76 and living in Hastings.
Klink brought his collection to his science teacher at James Hill Junior High School. Impressed, the teacher urged him to contact the Science Museum.
"Louis Powell (then the director of the Science Museum) came out and started digging trenches along the shores to see where this stuff was washing out from," Klink said. "They gave me my first job, which was helping them for $3 an hour."
Besides digging the Ranelius site, the museum carried out large-scale excavations at four other areas in the early to mid-1950s.
"If it weren't for Ken, the Science Museum probably wouldn't have even gotten involved," Fleming said. "Louis Powell wouldn't have even known about Spring Lake, wouldn't have given it two thoughts. So they did some great research, and I'm trying to expand on that so we learn about what was going on there."
Fleming secured a $21,000 grant in January through the Minnesota Historical Society, paid for with proceeds from the state's Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment.
The Science Museum is matching the grant with staff time, as is MSU-Mankato with Schirmer's time.
In March, scientists began examining the original field notes, maps and the collection — stone tools, ceramics, plant remains and bone material.
"One way to put material into a chronological framework — essentially, 'Is it from the late Woodland or Oneota cultures?' — is to go back to field notes and find all the depths from which the material came," Fleming said. "Material that's deeper than other material, as a rule of thumb, is older."
In June, geophysicist Don Johnson conducted a geophysical survey of about 2 acres of the site, providing archaeologists with hints on where to dig by revealing differences in the deposits beneath the surface.
The excavation, meanwhile, tells them whether the anomalies are natural or manmade — such as storage, refuse and fire pits and house floors.
Last week, Paul Wickman, owner of and primary analyst at Northstar Geographics, was sitting on the forest floor, using his high-tech geographic information system and special software to locate and store the site's archaeological and natural features.
"When we're finished, we'll also be able to look at and locate all of this in the real world through Google Earth and Google maps," Wickman added.
The results of the research will be submitted to the Minnesota Historical Society, as a requirement for the grant, and as an article in the Minnesota Archaeologist.
Fleming also is writing a blog for the Science Museum's website.
David Smith of Eagan happened upon the dig while hunting for mushrooms and inquired about the team's work. He said he had no idea ancient artifacts were buried there.
"I think it's great what they're doing," Smith, 66, said. "It's important to dig into our area's history; otherwise, you lose this stuff."
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