They dig it when the past gets in the future's way.

• Author: Selinsky, Deborah
• Position: Compliance archeology

Even the N.C. Department of Transportation finds its road blocked now and then. The obstacle? History. Work on a new Highway 17 bridge across the Chowan River ground to a halt in the summer of 1996 when someone realized its footing would run along the edge of the grounds of Eden House, the 18th-century plantation owned by Colonial Gov. Charles Eden.

The DOT staff archaeologists did a site survey to ensure they weren't building over anything historically important. To their surprise, they found bricks indicating a building once stood there. Because the bridge couldn't be rerouted, construction was delayed until all artifacts could be removed from the half-acre site.

DOT contracted archaeologist Loretta Lautzenheiser and her Tarboro-based consulting firm, Coastal Carolina Research Inc. - one of the state's largest, with 13 archaeologists - to excavate. Over four months, during which the 15 crew members weathered two hurricanes, they uncovered "an entire 17th-century settlement," Lautzenheiser says. "This was a once-in-a-lifetime project." The dig yielded stone and root cellars, a defensive stockade from 1663 and tokens used by merchants as currency. Lautzenheiser spent two years compiling a 735-page report, which she submitted, along with the artifacts, to the state archaeology office.

Though the profession may conjure up images of searching exotic locales for buried treasure, a la Indiana Jones, more Tar Heel archaeologists are scraping around road projects than whacking through snake pits and jungles. Under preservation laws enacted in the '70s, agencies and developers receiving money, technical assistance or permits from the state or federal government must take steps to avoid destroying relics lying in a project's path. That has led to the rise of a new field, compliance archaeology, in which professionals are contracted to survey proposed sites, determine their historical importance and, in many cases, move artifacts from the ground to the state's museums.

"There's more archaeological activity going on in North Carolina than ever before," says Kenneth Robinson, chairman of the N.C. Archaeological Council, a trade group. "We're the focus of a population boom, so there's a lot more development, more impact to the land and, consequently, many more ways for archaeological sites to be disturbed or destroyed."

Most archaeologists in North Carolina used to work for universities or museums. Now about half hold jobs at for-profit consulting firms...