Students at Butler Middle School learned about early human civilization in North America this week from one of the experts who has been on a number of digs himself.

Eric Scuoteguazza, an archaeologist, anthropologist and group manager of cultural resources at GAI Consultants, spoke to the fifth-grade students Tuesday and Wednesday about his experience as an archaeologist and what life was like for the early settlers of the continent.

According to Susan DeGeorge, a fifth-grade social studies and science teacher, Scuoteguazza enriched the unit students are currently being taught about how humans migrated to North America and where different groups of people settled.

Scuoteguazza told the students that early humans arrived on the continent at least 14,000 years ago through the Bering Land Bridge, which connected Asia and North America.

The goal of archaeologists is to figure out how those humans lived, using artifacts to figure out what life was like.

“We study humans through what we pull out of the ground, the artifacts,” he said. “They didn't have a written history like we have so it's up to us to piece it together ... You're basically trying to reconstruct their lives, how they lived, what they did, what they ate.”

One of the things archaeologists know about prehistoric groups in North America is that, at one point in time, they hunted large game, tracking and killing one animal over many miles. While hunting large game provided plenty of meat and large hides, following animals like mammoths and elk had some limitations.

“They're hard to get,” he said. “They weren't as common as small animals, and they browsed, they roamed.”

If a group of hunters killed a large animal, they had no way to carry it back to the village and instead had to butcher the animal and make multiple trips back and forth.

Eventually, early humans increased their reliance on small game, including but definitely not limited to rabbits, birds, turkeys, squirrels, snakes and raccoons.

“Anything was fair game,” Scuoteguazza said.

These smaller animals were much more common, and people didn't have to travel far to hunt.

In addition to changing how they hunted, early humans began to focus on plant life, gathering berries, fruits and nuts, leading to the formation of small villages where humans could stay in one place.

But those small villages needed to be near a water supply, Scuoteguazza said, which could also provide more food: clams, crabs, fish, crawfish and frogs.

Another part of Scuoteguazza's presentations included describing what it is that archaeologists do and how they approach a dig.

He said that during an archaeological dig, scientists use trowels, a versatile tool that helps gently unearth potential artifacts. In fact, tools for a dig can range from bulldozers and shovels all the way down to paintbrushes and dental picks, Scuoteguazza said.

“It's delicate (work) because you don't want to damage bone. You don't want to damage pottery,” he said.

Because soil can be acidic, most of the artifacts that remain are made of materials like stone; other materials or fibers tend to rot away, according to Scuoteguazza.

But everything that is found in a dig site is tracked using a grid system, which allows archaeologists to recreate a picture of what a given village or area was like and determine what the space was possibly used for.

DeGeorge said having Scuoteguazza speak to the students brings the history to life, much like his job does.

“This is the only way we know about history: through finding the artifacts and putting together the pieces of the puzzle,” DeGeorge said. “That's how they found out when people were here and how they went from being hunters and gatherers and settling down, hunting small game, establishing villages and whatnot ... It's really nice having somebody who could explain it in real terms and the importance of everything.”

It also gives the students an opportunity to learn what a working archaeologist does.

“We have an expert right here in town. He was actually on an archaeological dig, and he discovered a mastodon so he shared with the kids (about) one of his own archaeological digs,” DeGeorge said.

Nowadays, Scuoteguazza doesn't do many digs and instead leads a team of 25 people at GAI Consultants in cultural resources. That means he works with clients to make sure new developments meet the regulatory standards for protecting possible dig sites under the National Historic Preservation Act, he said.

But by visiting students, Scuoteguazza said he hopes they learn why archaeology matters.

“A lot of people think you can't even do this as a career, that it's just a hobby,” he said. “I wanted (the students) to understand why we do archaeology and how we all fit into this big picture ... This reminds me why I got into it to begin with.”