Wichita ? Construction will resume on a Wichita freeway project after archaeologists determined there were no signs of ancient human activity near the site where a mammoth tusk was found last week.

Though the discovery marked the first mammoth find in Wichita, tusks aren’t that unusual in Kansas. Four to six turn up in the state every year, said David Hughes, an anthropology professor at Wichita State University.

Archaeologists would have been much more excited had signs of civilization such as charcoal, projectile points or a fire pit been found near the tusk.

“This would have made our careers,” said Randall Thies, an archaeologist with the Kansas Historical Society.

“You’d have people from all over the country here,” added Hughes. “The first thing we would have done would have been to get a contract to delay construction.”

Wichita State University archeologist David Hughes, left, Randy Thies, a Kansas State Historical Society archeologist, and Marsha King, an archeologist with the Kansas Department of Transportation, wrap a mammoth tusk in plastic wrap to ready it for transportation. Workers excavating a roadbed for highway expansion in Wichita uncovered the tusk on Friday. It is estimated to be about seven feet long and at least 10,000 years old.

Mammoths, the largest land mammals known to have lived in North America, ranged along the front of the glaciers and southward as far as Texas and Florida during the Ice Age. In Kansas, their lives overlapped with the Clovis people, a nomadic group that likely came over the Bering Strait to what is now America.

Many archaeologists believe mammoths became extinct because of climactic changes, while others think they may have been over-hunted and that predators such as saber-toothed tigers also died out as their prey disappeared.

The tusk found Friday was discovered as crews were scraping away the final grade of the old roadway. Hughes said the tusk was that of a mammoth that died between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago, likely alongside a stream.