Looting Article?

[jamiebenedickt]

Pillaging the Past — High Country News

[RedHawk_ArtifactHunter]

I read that one to the end!!

[rmartin]

Thanks for that link. I was at Hucks Trading Post about 15 years ago and I have been to Edge of the Cedars a few times. Unfortunatly, that is a very said story.

[CDEAN]

Quote from the article-

The sack containing the broken jar, like most of the artifacts uncovered at the dig, went back to the university, bound for the Arizona State Museum. But there is a problem: The museum is almost full. In the next five to 10 years, every public repository in Arizona will have topped out. Institutions across the nation face the same difficulty. Yet archaeologists keep digging. In some cases, the digging is a matter of protecting cultural resources, salvaging artifacts before they are crushed by new developments or pipelines. In other cases, such as academic excavations, it is mostly a matter of scholarship. Either way, museums are choking on all that has been gathered,

Even though museums are almost full of artifacts and can't hold much more, archaeologists still condemn collection. It seems like they would rather the artifacts be in the ground where no one would ever see them than documented in someone's collection.

It's just a stupid situation.

[Indianasmith]

Very well done article, and surprisingly balanced.

[joshuaream]

That was a well written article.

[Trask]

I agree that was likely the most balanced and honest commentary I have read on the topic. In particular, I like that the author clearly makes the last idea
( and clearly the most absurd notion of preservation) a distinctly personal opinion and not a thinly veiled " matter of fact" as many others seem to do.

Great article

[eddies]

very good read. thanks for the post

[mootsman]

Fair and balanced given that most of the articles of this type are "fairly unbalanced." I do take issue with the statement that items placed in museums are there for perpetuity. There is a little procedure that most, if not all museums, use called a "deaccession policy."

[fishingandfirearms]

Let me get this straight. Archeologists just want the information and the history about the artifacts they dig for. Only a small percentage can be displayed in museums and the rest are stuck in depositories to potentially rot away. On the other side of the coin archeologist don't want pot diggers out there destroying the sites, but there is a strong demand for antiquities in private collections. Using logic, wouldn't it make sense for artifacts to go on the open market once the information has been obtained? It wouldn’t stop all pot diggers but it would give good ethical collectors a source to get artifacts that were obtained legally and documented, as well as provide funding for more scientific digs. I would think that most looters are motivated by the high sales value of these artifacts so increasing the supply of artifacts would also lower the cost and maybe decrease the number of looters. That’s just my 2 cents.