A 10-person crew of archaeologists and interns are digging for historic artifacts along the Des Plaines River in suburban Chicago.
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 working along the river in northwestern Cook County.
Jenny Benish is a staff archaeologist with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. She says the forest preserve has about 550 archaeological sites that date from the first paleo hunter gatherers to periods around World War II.
She says there's little property left in Cook County "where we could find out this information."
