A town’s love of Indian artifacts backfires

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Telluride Daily Planet
By HELEN O’NEILL
AP Special Correspondent

BLANDING, Utah (AP) — High above the spiky sandstone spine known as Comb Ridge that snakes for 120 miles through the desert, archaeologist Winston Hurst treads carefully through a cave of ruins.

The sun blazes down, illuminating the ghostly dwellings carved into the alcoves more than a thousand years ago. To a stranger the pre-Columbian pueblo ruins seem breathtakingly intact — walls and windows and rooms still standing, storage chambers for corn strewn with thousand-year-old cobs, large stone grinding slabs and brightly colored pottery sherds scattered throughout.

The archaeologist sees only destruction.

Driving to the ridge down a bumpy desert road across a plain dotted with sagebrush, cottonwood and pinon, Hurst pointed to trashed “pit houses” dating from 500-700 A.D. — distinctive mounds in the brush, where looters have dug for the ancient Indian tools, pottery, jewelry and blankets traditionally buried with the dead.

http://telluridenews.com/articles/2009/12/19/news/doc4ac7c7b51b2f3651305824.txt
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This article is fromm October; however, I think its message bears emphasizing.

[arcadian]

1. In Chaco Canyon you can find pottery sherds out on the trail.

I found some big ones where you can see the design and paint, squiggly lines, etc. I admired it for a few moments then placed off trail where nobody would see it and take it.

[Kali]

3. the ancients were as bad of litterbugs as any moderns

you shouldn't take things from sites but truthfully, surface scatter isn't real informative in terms of science

[arcadian]

5. True, I go back forth over the ethical dilemma of taking such things.

The Park Service has a zero tolerance policy, and I can see their point, the place would be picked clean if you allowed even the smallest fragments to be collected. But I mean, what, that thing would sit on my mantle and I'd have some good story about it for people, but when I died it would just end up in the trash. I still have the story, but no sherds. I know the sherds probably had little value for these ancient peoples but then again it might have. The entrance to Pueblo Bonito is flanked by to giant middens, which is strange

Surprisingly they do quite well with the "voodoo hex" they placed on the artifacts. when you walk into the visitors center the first thing you see is a display filled with sherds, next to it are letters from people who collected the sherds and sent them back claiming they had nothing but bad luck for having removed them. It's quite effective, it would appear.

[Kali]

11. I haven't been there since I was a kid so I don't even recall the visitor center

but given the numbers of visitors and the proclivity to pick up stuff coupled with the incredible amounts of broken ceramics I bet the returns are nothing compared to the "keeps" and even that is nothing compared to what is laying around.

My last arch site visit was at Paquime in northern Chihuahua and the damn visitor paths are pretty much graveled with sherds.

[Karia]

8. NOT TRUE

One type of archaeological fieldwork is the surface survey. "Sherd scatter" patterns are an important component of field surveys.

[Kali]

9. context matters, of course

but in a place where there has been so much work/disturbance, surface scatter does not tell you much of anything

[Jamastiene]

2. I wish I could just go to a page that has a list of all your OPs.

You find the most interesting articles.

K&R
:thumbsup:

[Chulanowa]

4. I often wonder...

How people would react if I and a couple of my relatives took our brown asses into "Shady Grove Presbyterian Cemetery" or whatever and started digging for lost artifacts.

[Kali]

7. there is plenty of historical archaeology done

the big issue with prehistoric work is actually proving ancestry and if the science is blocked for political/religious reasons, the connections can't be proved (or disproved)

oral histories are a source of information but certainly not biological proof

[libertypirate]

6. You know the biggest problem is

that most people don't know the difference between a rock and an ancient tool. This even goes for the people who claim expertise. 10,000 years of people dropping tools around in the SF Bay area you can find stuff almost every where. I have a fist size dark blue jade smoking bowl. The experts and native groups just ignore you when you try and contact them about it.

[dysfunctional press]

10. "This article is fromm October; however, I think its message bears emphasizing..."

i doubt that it would be worth the $5(at least) that it would cost to see it:

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