Since early May, amateur archaeologists have joined professionals in an ongoing excavation of a site in western Allendale County, S.C., that apparently was called home by humans in the Ice Age.

It's a summer camp of sorts for the amateurs, who paid $466 for a week of working with researchers from the University of South Carolina's Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, as part of the Allendale Paleoamerican Expedition. The last of five digs starts today at the site on the Savannah River just south of Martin.

Participants learn excavation techniques and how to identify artifacts. They camp near the dig and work from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

The site, discovered in 1998, is on the property of Clariant Corp., a manufacturer of chemicals. The location, named the Topper Site, is one of several in the eastern United States to produce evidence that humans lived in the Western Hemisphere during the last Ice Age, 16,000 or more years ago. That is 2,000 to 3,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought.

TO LEARN MORE about the dig, go to www.allendale-expedition.net.