Pillaging of ancient artifacts a problem

November 25, 2002

By Jim Greenhill
Herald Staff Writer

DOLORES – The Bureau of Land Management ranger watched the man with the garden trowel and the woman with the collapsible shovel digging in the sagebrush.

The woman stood and saw Ranger Lanny Wagner.

"We came up here looking for cactus, saw this stuff on the surface, and I guess we got a little carried away," she said. She was later identified as Tammy Woosley.

The couple were digging on a federally protected archaeological site near McPhee Reservoir.

What they were digging up was the nearly 1,000-year-old bones of an ancestral Puebloan – or Anasazi – who lived on the site somewhere between the year 950 and the year 1075.

Brenda Schultz, special agent for the U.S. Forest Service, investigates a hole Thursday that was dug on the Reservoir Ruin site near Dolores by people looking for artifacts to sell illegally.

Earlier this month, Woosley and her companion, Danny Keith Rose, pleaded guilty in federal court to misdemeanors in connection with the episode. The details of what happened – including what was said – at Reservoir Ruin on the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2000, are in court records. The defendants agreed to the government’s account of events as part of their plea agreement.

Federal land managers say the Reservoir Ruin case is a symptom of a problem throughout the Four Corners: the pillaging of archaeological sites to sell artifacts.

Linda Farnsworth is an archaeologist with the San Juan Public Lands Center trained in archaeological resource law enforcement.

"It’s a problem," she said Thursday at the Reservoir Ruin site. "It’s pretty widespread, and it’s still occurring."

Farnsworth estimated 15 incidents on U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management land in the region in the past year. "In no cases this year were we able to catch any suspects," she said.

In the Reservoir Ruin case, Ranger Wagner lucked out. Driving home on Colorado Highway 184, he saw the couple bent down in the sagebrush. A history of vandalism at Reservoir Ruin gave Wagner cause for alarm. Through binoculars, it appeared the couple were doing something to the ground.

These pieces of pottery were found at Reservoir Ruin, near Dolores.

Wagner climbed the hill to the ruin and walked up behind the couple, watching them work before Woosley stood and saw him. Woosley pulled a stone from her back pocket and gave it to the ranger, saying it had come from the hole they were digging.

The stone was a scraping or smoothing tool that had probably been buried with the human remains as a funerary object, archaeologists later determined.

Theft of artifacts from ancient sites and grave desecration offends American Indian tribes, including the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.

"They were left there for a purpose," said Dorothy Naranjo, a secretary in the tribe’s cultural preservation office. "They should be left alone."

To desecrate a grave is to dishonor the person who was buried there, Naranjo said. And people who desecrate graves are also dishonoring themselves, she said. "They’re being disrespectful to themselves," she said.

Naranjo said grave desecration also carries the risk of releasing whatever was buried with the person.

Isaiah F. "Zeke" Flora’s home was put under a medical quarantine in the 1930s after he hauled two bodies home from an ancient burial site. Flora was a notorious "archaeologist" who desecrated an ancient site in the Falls Creek area that remains off-limits the public to this day.

People who steal from archaeological sites are also disrespecting history, Farnsworth said. "When you alter what’s on the surface, it’s sort of like tearing out the pages of a history book," she said.

Brenda Schultz, special agent for the U.S. Forest Service, and Linda Farnsworth, archeologist with the U.S. Forest Service, investigate vandalism at the Reservoir Ruin site near Dolores on Thursday.

"That could’ve been the only piece – like a fingerprint – that gave that piece of the puzzle of what that culture was doing," said Forest Service Special Agent Brenda Schultz, who investigated the Reservoir Ruin case.

Moving ancient artifacts makes it impossible for researchers to accurately reconstruct the lives of the people who lived there.

The thieves often take bones, pottery shards, stone tools or even basketware or sandals for the money, Farnsworth said.

The artifacts are sold on the black market and end up in antique stores, at dealers, at trading posts, in arts and crafts stores, listed on the Internet or sold by word of mouth. "It ranges from local to international," Farnsworth said. "For the most beautifully decorated pottery, there’s a most active widespread, even international, market."

Artifacts can fetch from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on their condition.

It’s very difficult for investigators to catch the thieves. Once items end up in stores, potential buyers are often told that they came from private land, which is legal.

"Whether that’s true or not is pretty much impossible to prove," Farnsworth said. "Taken out of context, it’s very hard to prove where they came from."

When bones are found disturbed, Schultz must consult with the tribes, who decide whether the bones should be returned to the site or placed somewhere else after a special ceremony.

Federal law – including the Archaeological Resource Protection Act and the Native American Graves Repatriation Protection Act – governs what must be done to protect the artifacts and what penalties can be brought against vandals and looters.

Woosley and Rose have not yet been sentenced, but the result in a Utah case last week has upset some American Indians, who say penalties are not tough enough.

Almost seven years after a couple was charged with robbing a prehistoric Indian burial mound in southeastern Utah, the wife was put on probation and the case against the husband was dropped, the Associated Press reported.

The Forest Service has some tools to try to fight the tide of looting.

Residents who volunteer to monitor sensitive sites are among the most effective, Schultz said. The site stewardship program is a collaboration between the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the San Juan Mountains Association.

Volunteers visit sites weekly or monthly, depending on a site’s perceived vulnerability, and report problems to officials such as Schultz.

Federal land managers also try to reduce vandalism and looting by not advertising all sites.

"We don’t publicize where all the sites are," Schultz said. "We try not to have anything out there that draws attention."

The Reservoir Ruins site is an elaborate series of mounds and kivas where between 50 and 100 people may once have lived year-round in substantial, multistory rock, wood and mud dwellings. Pottery shards, stone fragments and depressions in the ground hint at lives lived there.

And freshly disturbed ground and hastily discarded piles of artifacts hint at the threat facing the Four Corners’ history and American Indian culture.

Reach Staff Writer Jim Greenhill at jim@durangoherald.com.