Collide-a-scape

A story I’ve been writing about and following closely since last summer has taken another odd and tragic turn. Here’s a can of worms that’s bound to be pried open:

Ted Gardiner, who had many off-the-record and deep background conversations with The Salt Lake Tribune during the past eight months, insisted he had come to the federal agents on his own to try to stop what he saw as immoral trafficking.

Gardiner was the sole source in the biggest sting operation against pothunters in the Southwest. He killed himself on Monday. Will those “conversations” see the light of day?

For a would-be pothunter, I supppose arrowheads are like a gateway drug.  Of course, not everybody becomes a junkie. And most people who become addicted to uncovering a piece of the past don’t become pothunters. That said, see if you can match the quote to the right author below. Don’t click on a link until giving it a try.

1) “I was hooked on this from the first time I picked up an arrowhead as a kid.”

2) “It is in our genes to collect and connect with our heritage. We have an inherent desire to touch and reflect on our past.”

3) “I grew up with a gut reaction to archaeology where an arrowhead in my hand felt warm with possibility.”

The three authors, in no particular order:

A) anonymous Blanding, Utah resident

B) Jane Waldbaum, past president of the Archaeological Institute of America

C) Craig Childs, well-known archaeology writer

There seems to be lingering anger and bewilderment over the FBI’s conduct in the June arrests of 16 suspected pothunters in Blanding, Utah. In my own reporting on this story, it’s one of the angles I covered here and here. Since then, I’ve been surprised to see that some authorities and former prominent government officials continue to focus on the FBI’s role.

For example, on Aug 7, it was reported that

A Utah sheriff whose brother was arrested for allegedly trafficking in Indian artifacts says he may charge federal agents with excessive force.

I guess that shouldn’t be so surprising. But today, the dogged reporter Tom Sharpe carries this quote from Jim Baca, the BLM director during the Clinton Administration:

If people are taking items from federal land, they’re thieves. There’s still a lot of this stuff going on. … They were digging up dinosaur bones all over state trust lands when I was land commissioner. … But the one thing I would say is I think (government agents) have to be a little more discreet on how these arrests are made. When they go in with SWAT teams and all this kind of stuff, that’s over the top. It’s just law enforcement out of control.

It’s one thing for the brother of an accused pothunter to think this. But the former head of a federal agency that is a full partner in the current crackdown?

I’ve recently spent a lot of time reporting in the Four Corners region of the Southwest. When this blog goes dark for a few days, it’s usually because I’m on assignment somewhere in the backcountry, or frantically trying to meet a magazine deadline.

So one of the stories I’ve been working on is about archaeology and pothunters. Several weeks ago, I wrote this piece for Science magzine about a recent, high-profile case. One of the more tortured and fascinating characters in this ongoing saga is an archaeologist named Winston Hurst, who lives in Blanding, Utah. Hurst is highly respected among his peers and he lives in a town notorious for pothunting. Somehow he’s walked this delicate tightrope for decades. An interview I conducted with him last month is now up at Archaeology magazine. As the headline indicates, it’s about how he lives among “the looters next door.”

Now that my CU Fellowship is over, I’ve been out in the field reporting on a bunch of stories, so blogging has been light the last few weeks.

Here’s a piece on the big pothunting investigation I recently wrote for Science magazine, published today (sub req). For those who haven’t followed the twists and turns of this case, it’s pretty fascinating. It’s a rich story that keeps sprouting odd tentacles.

Here’s the latest development, as reported in the Salt Lake Tribune.

An archaeologist discovers a very curious thing:

It appears that electronic buying and selling has actually hurt the antiquities trade.

How can this be?

The short answer is that many of the primary “producers” of the objects have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities. I’ve been tracking eBay antiquities for years now, and from what I can tell, this shift began around 2000, about five years after eBay was established.

What’s remarkable about this trend is not just the dampening effect on pothunting (one hopes), but that experts are having an increasingly harder time detecting genuine artifacts from the fakes.

Is there any difference between professional deep-sea treasure hunters and raggedy-ass grave-robbing pot-hunters?

The recent discovery of a booty-laden British warship buried 330 feet below the English Channel begs the question. In 1744, the HMS Victory, bearing 100 brass canons, and a crew of 1150, sank in a violent storm. Its fate has been one of the biggest mysteries in naval history.

The rotting hulk was found by Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Florida-based outfit. The British government has given the recovery operation its blessing.  At a press conference last week, Odyssey’s chief executive crowed:

“It is probably the most significant shipwreck find to date. HMS Victory was the mightiest vessel of the 18th century and the eclectic mix of guns we found on the site will prove essential in further refining our understanding of naval weaponry used during the era.”

Sean Kingsley, a marine archaeologist who consults for the company, calls the HMS Victory “the naval equivalent of the Titanic, perhaps even more important than the Titanic. It’s the only intact collection of bronze guns from a Royal Navy warship in the world.” Kingsley told the LA Times that the ship “was the equivalent in its day of an aircraft carrier armed with nuclear weapons…When it disappeared off the face of the earth, there was a collective gasp in the establishment and the general public.”

So why are some scientists and historians outraged by the find? Says one British archaeologist:

“If Odyssey is allowed to go ahead with this operation, it will cause uproar.  There are very hard questions to be answered about whether these sites should be recovered, and in particular whether the British government should be sanctioning that recovery.”

But why leave the ship frozen in time? Is it an ethical or scientific issue? True, the Florida salvage company is motivated by profit, and is expected to reap millions from the gold and silver coins recovered. But how else are these archaeological time capsules going to be discovered? Are any present-day governments sponsoring the search for their maritime heritage in the deep seas?

We go to the moon and mars to learn about the cosmos, why can’t we troll the earth’s oceans to unravel mysteries of the past?