[CPProt.net] Bighorn Canyon sites at mercy of unlawful artifact hunters

[MSN CPPnet]

Bighorn Canyon sites at mercy of unlawful artifact hunters 
July 17, 2005

By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff 

Sometime in the past 200 to 400 years, an artist from an exclusive Crow
religious society painted two sacred figures on the walls of a protected
rock shelter on the edge of the Pryor Mountains. 

He had meticulously drawn a man and a woman adorned with sacred hats worn by
Crow participants in Tobacco Society rituals. The artist probably created
his intense red paint by combining blood and urine with ocher, a reddish
clay that crops up occasionally in the ancient mountain range. Pieces of
ocher that the artist would have crushed to a fine powder for mixing his
paint were discarded on the floor of the shelter. 

"The Tobacco Society is very, very old,'' said Howard Boggess, a Crow and a
historian, as he sat on a rock in front of the 2-foot-high paintings. "It's
really a strong society. You have to work for years to get into it.'' 

 
Only those who are ritually pure, who drink no alcohol and don't partake of
hallucinatory drugs, can participate, he said. It's a male society,
according to Boggess, but women play an important role in ceremonies. 

Boggess and Mike Penfold, president of the Western Heritage Alliance, have
spent years wandering southeastern Montana and northern Wyoming, finding,
documenting and pushing to preserve archaeological sites. 

The two Billings men visited the Tobacco Society shelter last summer,
finding it in near pristine condition. Bureau of Land Management
archaeologist Glade Hadden of Billings hadn't seen the figures, so they
arranged an expedition for the next week. The shelter appeared untouched,
just as Boggess and Penfold had left it. After leaving an offering of
tobacco and plastic beads, the group made the arduous climb down the rocky
slope. 

A week later, Penfold and Boggess returned with another small group. This
time, it was clear that someone had been treasure hunting at the sacred
site. The figures had not been damaged, but looters had dug deep into the
shelter's powdery soil, looking for artifacts. 

They made off with the plastic beads deposited a week earlier, but that's
probably all, Hadden said. It's a ceremonial site, not an occupation site,
he said, and little would have been left behind by the Crow. 

"There's nothing even to loot, and they took it anyway,'' Hadden said in
disgust. 

It's another blow to scientists trying to understand a landscape that has
supported human life for at least 10,000 years. Sites all over public lands
in Montana and Wyoming are being systematically pillaged of information
vital to piecing together the ancient past, he said. 

There are probably some professionals out there digging for profit, hoping
to find something they can peddle online or to shady private collectors,
Hadden said. But he said he believes most looters are amateurs hoping to
expand their personal collections. 

"They really love the hell out of it,'' he said. "But they are destroying
what they love. They are destroying it so fast, we can't keep up with it.'' 

It's an obsession with some people, agrees Chris Finley, archaeologist for
the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. And artifact looting seems to
be an obsession that some are unable to control. 

"It's become a very serious problem,'' Finley said. "We just see more and
more of it all the time. We're not sure what it is they're finding, but
whatever it is, it keeps them coming back.'' 

This spring, he stood on a promontory in the national recreation area and
spotted a cairn, a pile of carefully placed stones, that had been looted
only two to three months earlier. Rocks from the dismantled cairn formed a
circle around its center. A rodent skull and a few small animal bones lay
among the ruins, but that was all. 

"If there was anything in there, I'll never know now,'' he said, crouching
to re-examine the ruined site. 

Artifact hunting or vandalizing archaeological sites on public lands is
almost always illegal. Professionals with proper credentials and a carefully
detailed project in mind may be able to get a permit for BLM lands, but
amateurs without credentials need not apply. 

Basically, it is illegal to excavate, deface or remove objects from public
lands or Indian reservations - including broad stretches of Montana managed
by the BLM, the Forest Service and the National Park Service. 

Writing "I love Mary'' or "Joe was here'' on an archaeological site can
prompt a federal felony charge. Stealing artifacts from a site can result in
a separate felony charge for each artifact taken. Looters can also be fined
and required to pay the cost of restoring damaged artwork or a salvage
archaeological survey of the area they have wrecked. Hadden said costs for
salvage archaeology can quickly reach $100,000 or more. Archaeology done
right isn't cheap. 

The problem is catching the violators, Finley said. Looters have boldly
operated on the edge of the Bighorn Canyon tour road, and no one has ever
been caught red-handed. 

Sound carries for miles in the national recreation area, and maybe the
thieves just jump into the brush when they hear a car coming, he said. Maybe
those who see them don't realize that people digging in the ground so openly
might be doing something wrong. 

There are more eyes out in the Pryor Mountains and on the Bighorn Canyon
National Recreation Area these days. Law enforcement officers are always on
the lookout, and all federal employees who work on public lands have been on
the alert for looters, too. So are volunteers like Boggess and Penfold.
Hadden has also put together a group of volunteer stewards who check sites
regularly. Members of the public who see something suspicious on public
lands are asked to report it to law enforcement. 

Beyond that, "all we really can do is educate them - try to develop a
conscience in them,'' Finley said. 


The Billings Gazette