Steve Kalasz looked at a pile of rocks near a shrub and saw history.

"It's right underneath the surface," he said. "People were here 1,000 years ago."

The frizzy-haired archaeologist stood on a windswept hilltop not far from Interstate 25 and pointed east and then west to the other side of the freeway.

He said that the archaeological site being excavated was likely a regular camp for American Indians who hunted bison and gathered seeds - a highly mobile group.

Colorado Department of Transportation officials stumbled on the site in 2002 when the city of Lone Tree wanted to expand an interchange at the Lincoln Avenue exit in anticipation of new home developments.

Daniel Jepson, staff archaeologist for CDOT, said that once the site was found, they quickly evaluated it. Digging began in earnest in May, and Jepson said they hope to be finished by the end of July.

The team of 11 archeologists digs in 1-meter by 1-meter squares, scraping off 10 centimeters of dirt about every 90 minutes. It's painstaking work, but care is needed when looking for arrowheads the size of half-dollars.

Erik Ferland, a 29-year-old wearing sunglasses and a hat with tails to protect the back of his neck from the sun, said he sharpens his shovel blade at least three times a day to make sure that the cuts and scrapes of his dig are clean and straight.

While digging, he said he picks up things that look like artifacts and puts them into a brown envelope in his breast pocket.

Not everything fits into the small envelopes though.

"The biggest thing we found was a hand grinder," he said, gesturing with his hands to indicate something about the size of a shoe box. "Mostly, though, it's small stuff."

The things recovered included charred rocks - indicating cooking rings - and the bones of animals killed for food, including antelope and bison.

The excavation site looks like a miniature version of the sites seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark, with varying depths of squares and rectangles - the deeper ones such that a person could stand in them and barely see over the edge.

They are marked with pink string and the archaeologists keep their tools - small shovels, dust pans and knives - close by at all times.

Off to the side, Kim Dugan picked up a large wooden box. She had just dumped a bucket of dirt into it and began shaking it, the dirt filtering through the bottom like flour through a sifter.

Except the 30-year-old said the dirt is so hard they actually have to run the smaller chunks through a water sifter to make sure they don't miss anything.

Kalasz said they won't really know what the site was until most of the artifacts dug up are taken back to the lab and studied.

"That's even more tedious than this part," he said with a laugh.

The dig was supposed to cost $220,000, the bill being footed by the city of Lone Tree.

But because of the hardness of the soil and the slow progress of the dig, Jepson said it will be "a little more than that."

Construction on the interchange is expected to begin either late this year or early next year, Jepson said. They also don't expect to excavate the entire site, which stretches east several hundred yards and west across the interstate.

All of the artifacts, once dated and studied at Centennial Archaeology Inc., will then be turned over to the Douglas County Historical Society. Kalasz said this site is "a little mundane," but such sites are often the ones that reveal the most about how people lived in the past.

From what they have gathered so far, this site could have been a summer stop-over place for an extended family of hunters and gatherers or a slightly larger group of unrelated American Indians.

"This is how most of prehistoric Colorado lived," Kalasz said. "That makes it a valuable history lesson for everyone."

monterod@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5236

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