Protecting Sites on Private Lands

[Mojave]

Strategies for Protecting Archeological Sites on Private Lands

[uniface]

An excellent idea, IMHO.

[paleo_joe]

What is your guess as to how many archaeological sites are destroyed by real estate development vs. collecting or digging?

I would bet that real estate development does more damage to the archaeological record than private collecting. Prime real estate has always been prime real estate, and the highest and best use now is going to be a subdivision or a walmart.

It is the irony of collecting. Private property rights that we defend so we can dig or whatever are the same ones used by the banks to destroy more sites in a year than you could dig in a lifetime.

[zachMA]

I'd say development has already decimated more sites than all private collectors combined ever will. Developers would no doubt cover up anything found or destroy it rather than risk having the property designated as a site. All about getting it done quickly and cheaply.

[rokdok]

How far is too far?

The UN and property rights

[Scotto]

Originally Posted by paleo_joe

What is your guess as to how many archaeological sites are destroyed by real estate development vs. collecting or digging? I would bet that real estate development does more damage to the archaeological record than private collecting. It is the irony of collecting. Private property rights that we defend so we can dig or whatever are the same ones used by the banks to destroy more sites in a year than you could dig in a lifetime.

Agree 100%.

I've seen it first hand here. One site I went to a couple years back was under construction, they were paving over a very large area, right smack in the middle of an old campsite. I had permission to surface hunt the place, and a security guard came out one day and gave me the third degree. So I started dropping names of people who gave me permission, and he realized there wasn't much he could do. He told me I wouldn't find anything there, the camp was located further away, and they had brought in a state archeologist who said "Nothing was found, continue with construction."

What a joke. I was finding stuff all over there, and locals had picked up hundreds of points there for years. Now it's all paved over.

I lived in Florida for many years, I've been all over the state. There's not many places left where homes aren't all along the beachfront for the rich, and of course all of the hotels and restaurants too, near the cities. Plus all of the roads that run right by the coast, and all of the parking lots. I wonder what percentage of Indian camps and middens have been destroyed by bulldozers or paved/built over?

[Massac]

I guess this is as good a topic as any to share this story.

My brother took me to meet this farmer he'd met through deer hunting. He's around 90 and still farming. In fact he owns the land where 15 or so Mississippian (including burial) mounds used to be located.

You see this guy is cool and used to let anyone surface hunt. Well in the mid sixties a group of SIU students and their professor shows up after spring plowing and asked to hunt and he let them. They left little flags sticking out everywhere, which pissed him off, but he just planted over them.

A few weeks later he gets a letter in the mail from SIU anthropology dept. on how they were going through legal means (imminent domain?) to take the area around the mounds. He said they wanted 50 acres. The letter was taken to his lawyer who advised him to destroy the mounds while he still could. The people with the steam shovels and stuff happened to be working nearby and they knocked them down.

A few weeks after that SIU sends down a young and attractive old female to go look at the site. Wisely he had his wife come along. They get to the site and the girls says "Yeah, you destroyed it," and leaves and he's never seen them since.

On a side note we have permission to hunt this site, but it's no till and it only gets disced about every five years.

Sorry for the book, but it's a story I thought needed to be told.

[Massac]

Paleo Joe you never hear them bashing real estate developers or farmers because they have political power through lobbyist Collectors are the scapegoat for all the ills of North American archaeology.

[longtimefree]

one of my honey holes now has a church camp for kids sitting top of it, i found it after a bull dozer went in and cut a fire break , unbelievable the debitage that was uncovered ,,and then they just built over it i dont think anyone cared but damn that was one spot i will always remember , just littered everywhere

[lance b]

Hate a great spot in San Antonio and now it's a huge apartment complex and not a bit of dirt there. I won't ever tell an archeologist any damn thing, because they take enough away already.