CHICAGO – For this dig, University of Chicago archeologists don’t have to spend hours on planes like they do when they head off for the farthest reaches of the planet to unearth treasures. They can walk.

The site is right down the street from campus in Jackson Park. And as they dig, the archeologists may be uncovering artifacts from one of the most exciting events in the city’s history, a time when the entire world was watching what went on here: The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Archaeologist Rebecca Graff and 20 undergraduate students have pulled pieces of glass bottles, broken crockery, rusty nails and other items from the grounds of the World’s Fair, the fabled “White City.”

With all but the Palace of Fine Arts, now the Museum of Science of Industry, torn down, Graff hopes to offer a glimpse of what those six months were like when 27 million people descended on what was once a breathtaking collection of classical exposition buildings, canals, restaurants and other attractions.

“We’re interested in seeing what is left of the buildings themselves,” said Graff, whose students have ben digging every Friday and Saturday since April. “I am interested in the experience of the tourists. What were they buying, eating and drinking at the fair?”

The dig is the university’s first foray into its own backyard as an urban archaeology laboratory, offering U of C students a chance to take part in a scientific excavation.

“The desire to preserve the past is not strong here,” said Shannon Dawdy, a U of C assistant professor of anthropology who is Graff’s doctoral adviser and one of the founders of the school’s urban archaeology project. “Our excavation of the fairgrounds is the first project under a pilot program to train students, using the city as laboratory and an archaeological site.”

Graff picked four areas in the 633-acre fairground site to excavated. They’ve dug a few holes, each about three feet deep and 6.5 feet square.

In the first few inches, the students uncovered garbage like aluminum beer and soft drink cans left behind in the late 20th century. They also found strange pieces of metal that date all the way back to what seem to them like ancient times, the days when their parents and grandparents were their age.

“These things mystified some of the students who had no clue what they were,” Graff said of pull top tabs from beer and soft drink cans. “They grew up after the can industry stopped that sort of litter by introducing flip-top lids that stay attached to the can.”

As they dig, the students are finding hundreds of ceramic and glass pieces. And they are starting to consult with experts and examine old photographs in an effort to try to determine what kind of containers all those pieces add up to and what they held.

The Columbian Exposition was, said Graff, an event that introduced such well-known products as Cracker Jacks, Aunt Jemima pancakes and Wrigley Juicy Fruit gum, so perhaps some of the pieces may be from containers of those items.

“But we know peddlers were also sneaking their goods into the fairgrounds all the time, and maybe we will see some of those things, too.”

The history of the fair also, it turns out, intersects with Graff’s own history. A native of Los Angeles, Graff learned from her family that when one of her great-grandfathers, a Russian Jew, immigrated to the United States, one of his first jobs was as a ditch digger on the exposition grounds.

“It has made me feel more connected to the exposition,” she said.