Volunteers Tim Meyer (left), an anthropology student at UMSL, and Elizabeth Blaufuss, an anthropology student at Miami University, screen dirt as they look for items during a dig at Cahokia Mounds. (Belleville News-Democrat photo-Derik Holtmann, dholtmann@bnd.com)

Timothy Meyer, a senior majoring in anthropology at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, has been getting his hands dirty this summer, logging real-world experience helping excavation efforts at Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, Ill., just east of St. Louis.

Meyer joined other volunteers this summer who are working on a dig west of Monks Mound at Cahokia Mounds. Among the volunteers was a group from the University of Bologna in Italy.

The Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat recently stopped by the summer excavation and photographed Meyer working alongside other volunteers.

“Most of the artifacts we find are bits of chert (used to make stone tools like arrowheads), pieces of pottery, animal bones and other rocks such as yellow or red ochre, powdery rocks used to make pigments,” Meyer told the Belleville News-Democrat.

Meyer is one of two UMSL students taking part in an excavation project this summer in Greece.