They bent to their tasks, brand-new tools bright against the red dirt. What would the uprooted trees at Oakland Cemetery reveal?

Fragments of pottery, or maybe a Minié ball that killed a long-ago soldier?

Joey Ivansco/Staff (ENLARGE)

A downed tree finds its final resting place in the Confederate burial section of Oakland Cemetery, where approximately 6,900 Confederate soldiers, including 3,000 unknowns, are buried.

MARK DAVIS / AJC (ENLARGE)

Dustin Hornsby, an Oakland Cemetery employee, looks among the root balls of trees toppled by the tornado at the 48-acre cemetery to see what might show up.

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Perhaps remains of the soldier himself?

Tuesday, archaeologists gathered at Oakland to prowl the path of the March 14 tornado. They came looking for whatever the root balls of toppled trees might reveal.

"There are 70,000 burials here," said Sara Sanders, an archaeologist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Not all of them are in coffins."

FEMA began the uncertain task of looking in the root balls of about 20 trees of varying height and age. Some are scattered among the site where an estimated 7,000 Civil War soldiers are buried; others are lying across unmarked graves at Potter's Field, where Atlanta for decades buried its unknown poor.

Archaeologists may find evidence of 19th-century life, such as pottery or household items. They also acknowledge that their trowels may come across human remains.

FEMA, which will fund the majority of the cemetery's renovation and cleanup, has dispatched archaeologists to Oakland for legal, as well as scholarly, reasons. They are charged with making sure no human remains are disturbed.

If they find any bones? "We call the coroner," Sanders said.

She grasped a potting shovel such as gardeners use and banged it against a clod of dried clay that had come from the root ball of a toppled white oak. It crumbled into little red fragments. Sanders spread the soil in her left hand, looking. Nothing.

Sanders shrugged. "This is a prime place for artifacts," Sanders said. "The day is young."

The 48-acre cemetery is not. Oakland has been a burial ground since 1850 and still hosts a handful of burials annually. The city's first park, Oakland is on the National Register of Historic Places. Golfing great Bobby Jones is interred there. Not far from his plot, littered with admirers' golf balls, is the grave of author Margaret Mitchell. Five Confederate generals are buried at the cemetery, as are mayors and statesmen and business leaders.

Oakland lay in the path of the tornado, which rose like a dark wave and crashed on downtown Atlanta. The tempest ripped the head off a stone angel as easily as a child would snatch the bloom off a tulip. It kicked over obelisks as if they were no more than Dixie cups.

When it was done, the tornado had caused an estimated $3 million to $4 million in damage to the cemetery. One historic specialist guessed that as many as 7,500 objects — memorials, trees, walls, walkways and more — were damaged. Restoring the park will take federal, state and local funds, as well as private donations.

Oakland remains closed to the public. The cemetery will open briefly this Saturday, Confederate Memorial Day, for a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The organization's members will gather near the obelisk that remembers the Confederate dead. It stood firm in the tornado.

Oakland is but one historic cemetery in the metro area. Westview Cemetery in west Atlanta, Marietta Confederate Cemetery and the Lawrenceville Historic Cemetery all hold Confederate graves as well as other older burials.

On May 1, Oakland also will resume weekday tours that groups scheduled before the tornado hit. The park may open "on a modified basis" June 1, said David Moore, executive director of the Historic Oakland Foundation.

On a recent morning, Moore stood near the Confederate burial site. A downed oak tree's limbs threaded the old monuments like fingers splayed between dominoes. A woodpecker hammered at an evergreen. A hundred yards away, a city worker in an orange vest worried a stand of weeds with a gas-powered trimmer.

"It's all so peaceful now," said Moore, who oversees the nonprofit agency created to help fund the cemetery's operation and renovation.

That peacefulness is likely to end next week, when crane operators and workers with chain saws begin removing downed trees and limbs. Specialists say the debris — trees, limbs and other material — should fill more than 130 full-size dump trucks. It will take months to get rid of it all.

Archaeologists don't have that much time. They have to assess the root balls this week, then turn their attention to damaged monuments.

Sanders had one eye on her work, another on the clock. She and three others had probed soil from the downed oak for almost two hours. They'd spread the dirt on a green tarp, then knelt, tools in hand. Occasionally, they'd paused, squinting at a chunk of stone, a flash of white. A slice of pottery? A bone chip?

After nearly two hours of probing the root ball of the toppled tree, the FEMA archaeologist decided to move to the next site.

"More to go," she said.

The workers folded their tarp and carried it to a waiting pickup truck, their shadows a step behind in the late-morning sun. The truck started and headed toward Potter's Field. There, a tree — dead, or dying — lay atop bodies. What would it reveal?