[MSN] Looters still ravaging ancient Arizona. 2 people patrolling 9 million acres can't stop treasure hunt.

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Looters still ravaging ancient Arizona 
2 people patrolling 9 million acres can't stop treasure hunt

Thomas Ropp 
The Arizona Republic 
Jul. 6, 2006 12:00 AM 

ST. JOHNS - An Arizona State Land Department investigator and an Arizona
State University archaeologist looked intently out the windows of the small
aircraft as it circled a desert wash above ancient gravesites.

Soon, the two men saw the telltale signs: makeshift roads, heavy equipment,
a series of linear cuts.

"Look at all those holes; they weren't there before," archaeologist Keith
Kintigh said. "That's where they're digging." advertisement  
 

Experts fear looting of ancient Native American burial sites in Arizona is
on the rise, though Land Department investigator Brad Geeck said there are
no hard statistics to track those trends. "Every year, the calls seem to
increase."

The rewards, experts say, outweigh the risks. A single intact pot can bring
as much as $75,000. 

Desecrating human remains to get to the pot is a misdemeanor, with a fine of
less than $500.

Federal and state antiquities laws can bring looters serious prison time -
on a second offense.

But there is no law against excavating pots on private land unless it is
associated with a burial site.

Despite numerous recommendations to the Legislature during the past decade,
there still are only two investigators to police nearly 9 million acres of
state trust land in Arizona. 

To help even the playing field, Geeck has turned to aerial surveillance and
partnering with non-profit archaeological groups.

Last week, Geeck hired a pilot friend at Deer Valley Airport to fly him to
the St. Johns area after receiving a tip that looting was turning up human
remains and that bones were scattered everywhere.

Kintigh accompanied Geeck because he was familiar with the area and had
worked at nearby sites. The area is rich in archaeological artifacts of
ancestral Zunis dating back to A.D. 1200. 

Geeck needed to know whether the looters were digging on state land.


Sophisticated searches


Pothunters today are sophisticated, well organized and good at discovering
archaeological sites and graves, he said.

"They use a steel rod with a steel point and shove it into the ground,"
Geeck said. When the pole moves freely, detecting an open space, they likely
have found a burial site, he said.

John Madson, associate curator of archaeology at the Arizona State Museum in
Tucson, called in the St. Johns tip to Geeck after hikers in the area had
come across the fresh looting.

Madson said the thefts from the St. Johns area are among the hundreds of
thousands of Arizona artifacts that likely have been lost.

"These bulldozers just take and erase 2,000 years of information from the
landscape," Madson said. "We know little about northeastern Arizona sites.
And the way it's going, we'll never know much because it's all going to be
ripped apart."

He said that in the past, looted pots have primarily been sold through
Western stores and other retail outlets.

More recently, pots and shards are being auctioned off on eBay.

"You can assume anything you're buying from the private sector is stuff
that's looted from archaeological sites," Madson said.


A century of spoilage


Hunting artifacts in the Southwest is nothing new. Ancient people, including
the Anasazis, Sinaguans and Hohokams, built thousands of structures
throughout Arizona during the past 2,000 years. 

Some, like the multistory ruins that are the namesake of Casa Grande, have
been protected as national monuments. Others are in various states of
protection, and archaeologists haven't studied most.

Looting a century ago at New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historic Park,
the center of the Anasazi empire, helped prompt Congress to pass of the 1906
Antiquities Act, which has been used by nearly every president since to
protect Western archaeological sites. 

Prompted by a developer's plans to dig up a 100-room, 14th-century Sinaguan
site near Cornville, about 10 miles northwest of Cottonwood, the Arizona
Legislature in 1990 passed emergency legislation to stop grave robbers from
unearthing Indian burial grounds.

The bill made it illegal to knowingly disturb any buried human remains or
burial artifacts without permission of the state, but the law is difficult
to enforce.


Burial sites for sale
Madson said the changing of ranch ownership in communities like St. Johns
has also contributed to the problem. He said that for more than 100 years,
many ranchers protected the sites and kept people away.

But their children, who inherited the ranches, don't care about that, he
said, and are dividing their parent's property into ranchettes and often
leasing them to pothunters.

Geeck said looters also are putting minimum down payments on properties with
known archaeological sites.

"After they've raped the land, they vanish," he said.

But Geeck said an even bigger problem is convincing people in communities
like St. Johns that pothunting is a crime.

Madson said many people in that area believe pothunting is recreation.

"Families have been doing it for 100 years, and they're not about to stop,"
Madson said.

After touring the St. Johns site from the air, Geeck determined there was
sufficient evidence that the looting was new and taking place on state land.
He said he would return, this time on the ground.

http://www.azcentral.com/