Archaeologists Say Artifact Looting A Problem In Wyoming
Archaeologists: artifact looting a problem in Wyoming
By The Associated Press
CHEYENNE - Trafficking in illegal antiquities ranks alongside gun and drug trafficking in terms of profitability, and archaeologists say Wyoming's wealth of American Indian and frontier-era artifacts can make the state an antiquities gold mine.
"The thing about illegal activity on archaeological sites is so many of them are in remote, rural locations, it's hard to quantify what goes on out there because you're not out there a lot," said State Archaeologist Mark Miller.
Julie Francis, an archaeologist at the Wyoming Department of Transportation, said collectors provide a market for illegal antiquities and the Internet has worsened the problem.
In Wyoming, the problem includes surface collecting, theft or defacement of rock carvings, and even trade in human remains. Francis said two of her own sites in highway rights of way were looted at night.
Bottles and other artifacts of frontier life are also popular targets, she said.
At Fort Laramie National Historic Site, excavations by assistant state archaeologist Danny Walker in 2003 revealed a large looter hole in the site's historical trash dumps.
Walker said the culprit was likely looking for old bottles and had left behind a plastic-handled garden trowel. The trowel had little rust, leading Walker to suspect that the looting occurred within the previous 10 years.
In 2002, someone dug up World War I-era graves in Gebo, a town occupied from the 1890s to 1970s. Mike Bies, the archaeologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Worland Field Office, was worried someone might have been trying to get the skulls, although no bones were removed. Others have suggested that the grave robbers were looking for jewelry or possibly coins placed over the corpses' eyes.
Whatever the case, it was illegal. Collecting on public land is always illegal without a permit. And so is collecting on private land without permission from the landowner.
But collecting isn't entirely off-limits to amateurs. Archaeologists say that recreational collectors have helped the profession enormously.
"Many professional archaeologists got their start collecting arrowheads as kids," Francis said. "And there have been many, many positive relationships between professional archaeologists and avocational groups."
Reports from recreational groups to archaeologists, he said, have led to the discovery of many important sites. "Some people consider them the eyes and ears of the profession because they're out in the field more often than professionals," Miller said.
Professional looters, on the other hand, care only about one thing: profit. They know where the sites are; often they are well educated and may even have taken archaeology classes or volunteered on excavations, Francis said.
They also frequently have histories of alcohol or drug abuse and have been known to collect artifacts to fund their habits. Bies urged anyone who sees suspicious activity on public land not to approach suspected looters.
"In the Southwest, where they've caught looters, they're almost always found in possession of illegal firearms and drugs," Bies said. "So there's a very good chance that these are not the kind of people you want to talk to out in the country."
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