Dexter ? Archaeologists are searching for signs of the more distant past in the clumps of soil taken from an area that is destined to be the site of a new bridge.

A team of archaeologists employed by the Louis Berger Group, an archaeological firm based in Marion, arrived about two weeks ago to study the patch of ground near the banks of a southeast Kansas creek.

“It has a lot of potential,” said archaeologist Todd L. Butler. “We’re at the beginning stages, so you really don’t know what’s there and that’s part of the fun.”

The Kansas Department of Transportation plans to put in a new bridge at this spot early next year. The current bridge that spans Grouse Creek has some structural problems, said Alan Grunder, an engineer for the department.

The Department of Transportation commissioned the archaeological team after a surveyor checking out the ground found an artifact.

State law requires that native artifacts be salvaged and identified before land is altered forever. The Transportation Department performs environmental and archaeological impact studies of any area where construction is planned, Grunder said.

The Dexter site is believed to be one of many temporary Indian encampments in the area and was probably occupied by several different native groups over thousands of years.

So far, the team has found a few flint shards — the chips left over from arrowhead making — a mussel shell or two and some burnt rock that likely surrounded an ancestral fire.

For these workers, patience is a virtue.

“Every once in a while you find something, and it makes it worthwhile,” said archaeological field technician Marco Gonzalez, from Brownsville, Texas.

Depending on what the archaeologists find, this group will determine whether the site ends up on a national historical register.