Time's Secrets, Unearthed

I was told to remove the dirt in a neat and orderly process, all in one level, as if by microtome. My trowel was comically small, like something a child would use. The preferred method is to hold the blade parallel to the ground, slicing off thin layers.

When I had assembled a mound of earth, I would push it into a dustpan, then dump it into a bucket that Mike's wife, Peggy, would retrieve. She'd tip the contents onto a screen, shake it back and forth and see what was left.

It's so slow , I whined to Mike. Our holes were barely six inches deep, and that's after a year of digging. Don't you ever get the urge to just grab a shovel or a jackhammer and go to town?

"You have to resist those urges," said Mike, dryly.

At times I looked wistfully over at Pete Poggi and Jerry Kimmich , who gently swept metal detectors over the leaf-strewn ground. When they picked up a signal in their headphones, they'd drop to a knee and start digging, noting the location and depth of any artifact they unearthed.

That this sort of instant gratification was even allowed was because of a concern Jim and Heather had: relic hunters. It's against the law to remove artifacts from public land, but the archaeologists had detected signs of scavengers. It's why they were eager to document what they could, quickly, and why I can't tell you our exact location.

"People'll cut your throat for a relic," Jerry, 54, told me.

Said Jim, 62: "Archaeology is all about the science of measuring things in. If you take something out of the site, it's like taking something out of a crime scene."

Back at my hole, I shaved away at the soil. Roots would get in the way, and every few minutes I stopped to clip them. As I moved a thin layer of dirt, I saw a ruddy streak. Another root, said Don Housley , a retired Wheaton High School teacher who worked beside me. But there was a metal-on-metal sound as my trowel blade clinked against it.

I scraped some more until I revealed what looked like a tool, about four inches long and a half-inch wide. A knife handle, maybe.

Mike and Don stopped their digging. Jim came over. I lifted the knife handle from the earth and wondered who had last touched it.

Have a job I can do? E-mailkellyj@washpost.com.