TRUCKEE, Calif. (AP) - Archaeologists planning a major dig at the lake campsite of the Donner Party hope they will find remnants of history going back thousands of years.

The lake is best known for the party of wagon train pioneers trapped at the site in the terrible winter of 1846-47. About half of the 81 people died, and some of the survivors are thought to have resorted to cannibalism.

But the lake has a lesser-known human history that goes back at least 6,000 years, and possibly to the mammoth hunters of 11,000 years ago.

"There are Native American sites that go back long before the Donner Party," said Hayden Sohm, superintendent for the Sierra district of California State Parks. "People have been crossing Donner Pass for thousands of years and camping at the lake."

The dig, expected to begin sometime this summer, will take four to five weeks, officials said. A $6 million museum is scheduled to be built on the site at Donner Lake Memorial State Park near Truckee. The new museum is planned just northwest of the existing building - a location that places it on a path between two of the three lake camp cabin sites of the Donner Party.

Previous digs at the Murphy cabin site south of the museum unearthed artifacts of the Donner tragedy, including musket balls, ceramic shards, jewelry and other day-to-day items of the 1840s. The Breen cabin site is believed to be under the pioneer monument and so hasn't been excavated.

It's unknown if the new dig will shed more light on the Donner Party, but archaeologists and Donner Party buffs say there have been so few excavations at the historic site anything could be found.

"Who knows what they will find? Anything is possible," said Frankye Craig of Reno, author of "The Fateful Journey of Tamsen Donner," a novel published this month.

"I'm sure there will be artifacts of the 1840s. Anything would help add to the picture of the Donner Party, especially human bones."

Archaeologists digging in 2004 at what is believed to be the Alder Creek camp of the Donner family - about six miles northeast of the lake - found artifacts and animal bones but no evidence of human cannibalism. Scientists who investigated the Murphy cabin site in the 1980s and 1990s also failed to find physical evidence of cannibalism, although reports from 1847 say it occurred at both camps.

The dig will be overseen by a Chico State University professor and conducted by state parks archaeologists. Although souvenir hunters and amateur archaeologists carted off the larger artifacts from 1847 to 1900, many more clues to what author George R. Stuart called the "ordeal by hunger" could still lay buried.

At or just beneath the level of the Donner's occupation, archaeologists might be able to discover traces of the Townsend-Stephens-Murphy Party, 1844 pioneers who brought the first wagons over the Sierra. Moses Schallenberger, a 16-year-old member of that party, spent the winter at the lake and lived in a cabin to be occupied by the Breen family two years later.

"The Townsend-Stephens-Murphy Party is actually more important than the Donners in the history of the pass, but they've been (overshadowed) by the Donner story," Craig said. "I don't think there are too many artifacts of the 1844 party. They don't get much credit."

Deeper still may be artifacts of the Washoe people, the tribes who preceded them, and other humans who crisscrossed Donner Pass thousands of years ago.

Previous digs have unearthed Washoe ovens, projectile points - spear and arrow tips - that go back at least 6,000 years.

Sohm said artifacts found during the study might be displayed in the new museum. Construction is scheduled to begin next year and completed by the summer of 2008.