A technician pulls the ground-penetrating radar unit across the site. A laptop computer was used to record ground-penetrating radar data in the field. The second phase of the data recovery consisted of manual excavation of 30 square meters within the pipeline corridor. For three weeks in August 1996, archaeologists used shovels and trowels to dig units measuring 1 X 1 m. The digging was in places where the radar survey had located potential features, or where the 1995 field work had indicated that artifacts were present in quantity.
Excavators use trowels to carefully unearth a cluster of fire-cracked rock.
Retouched blade excavated from 21AN106 in 1996. The tool is made from Hixton Quartzite, a material that was derived from bedrock deposits in west-central Wisconsin. At least 18 different types of stone were used in making tools at 21AN106. The nearest source for this is in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, a thousand miles west of 21AN106. Some of this material was found in loose clusters that may have been fire hearths, but the rocks had been scattered through several thousand years of burrowing by animals.