John Kelly, a senior lecturer in Washington University’s department of anthropology, started leading a team in 1998 to again unearth the structures Perino found and expand on Perino’s research. Students and volunteers have been helping Kelly with the project every summer since then, diligently scraping away dirt and clay 10 centimeters at time to ensure that nothing gets damaged.

But so far this summer, they haven’t found a whole lot.

“We found a stone knife about 7 inches long. That was very exciting,” said Joy Mersmann, a rising senior and research assistant at Washington University. “A lot of the big stuff that we would have otherwise found was taken by Greg Perino.”

Their goal — to find the walls of the building where hunters met for gatherings — has been impeded by poor mapping and documentation of the building by Perino and other past archaeologists. They have not yet found the building’s outline. In past years, Kelly’s team was able to locate and verify Perino’s findings, including finding the copper workshop, but only after tedious educated guesses about where the buildings and artifacts might be.

Though Kelly and his team have spent almost 20 years at Mound 34, it is just a small piece of an archaeological site that is constantly surprising researchers.