SPRINGFIELD - Southern Illinois University archeologists are using sensors to better understand the ruins of a 1,000-year-old town located near Metropolis.

By sweeping magnotometers over the Kincaid Site, experts are getting a glimpse of the how the town may have looked before years of cultivation changed the landscape, said Mike Wiant, director of the Illinois State Museum at Dickson Mounds.

"There are aspects of the site that are not visible on the surface," he said. "They are getting an idea of community structure. How the town was organized."

Brian Butler, director of SIU's Center for Archeological Investigations, said the scans suggest the 150-acre site may be larger than first thought, revealing a new mound to the west of the main structure.

"It shows us some things about the site without having to put a spade in the ground," Butler said.

Butler suggests that the main site may have had a population closer to 1,500 rather than the 600 people first estimated. Overall, the entire region could have been home to 3,000 people, whom Butler describes as mainly farmers.

The Kincaid site and other like it around the state can provide archeologists with a snapshot of life a thousand years ago, Wiant said.

"These thousand-year-old towns are essentially metropolitan areas," Wiant said. "They are the places people would go for marketplaces. They are the places farmers would bring produce." Archeologists have been studying the site that covers dozens of acres in Massac and Pope Counties since the 1930's. People are still trying to figure out which Mississippian people may have settled the Kincaid site, however.

"We don't know who they were," Butler said.

Butler said the culture was likely similar to that found at Cahokia Mounds.

Wiant remains optimistic that someday scientist will be able to eventually identify who lived at the Kincaid site.

"Archeology is one of those sciences that where a person walking across a field may find an artifact that may completely change the way we view the past," he said. "You need to be prepared to change your ideas."

matt.adrian@lee.net 217-789-0865.