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Thursday, January 17, 2008

State Archaeologist Shares Tales of Looting

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
    Tales of drugs, looted archaeological sites and the theft of American Indian bones are part of what Phillip Young uses to encourage conservation.
    It's something that should be of concern to New Mexicans, according to Young, who is an archaeologist with the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division.
    That's because New Mexico has had more prosecutions under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) than the rest of the country combined, Young said at a presentation to the Friends of Tijeras Pueblo and the Friends of the Sandia Mountains on Jan. 8.
    Young was involved in a number of undercover sting operations, sometimes posing as the buyer of illicit goods. For someone who knows what he or she is looking at or who is seedy enough to do it, there can be financial gains to looting, he said.
    "You can see how people might be tempted to go to the dark side," he said.
    One of the stings Young discussed was called Operation Silent Witness, an investigation that involved the San Juan County Sheriff's Office early on because of an overwhelming correlation between the looting and methamphetamine use.
    "Literally everybody who got indicted had a meth problem or was trying to kick it," Young said.
    In that case, which happened around 2000, the artifact dealer was cooking methamphetamine and selling the drug for looted artifacts.
    The dealer then sold some of the artifacts at the Farmington flea market.
    Young referred to some of the damage done by looters in that case as "potholes," where people dig through layers of archaeologically significant detritus in a hunt for large ceramic items.
    "They certainly don't publish how things are done, and just destroy the scientific record," Young said.
    He added that the looters also hinder archaeologists' ability to "put together the jigsaw puzzle of what happened in the past."
    He added that the majority of looting is being done by fringe groups such as drug addicts, survivalists or a few people with large mechanized equipment.
    "It's very much of a minority and a subculture," he said.
    Young said he believes that looting is out of the mainstream because of recent education and outreach efforts.
    But even those who are educated sometimes break the law.
    On a field trip in the early 1990s, an archaeology student from the College of Santa Fe took an American Indian skull that may have been 800 years old from Grand Gulch Primitive Area in Utah.
    His professor told him to put the skull back, but instead the student kept it and even displayed the skull on the dashboard of the school vehicle on the trip home, according to Young.
    "Not all the students thought that was in good taste," Young said.
    The case was prosecuted and the student ended up with a felony and the professor left the college.
    As part of the fallout from the case, a conference of experts from across the United States, including at least one person from Alaska, was held to develop a curriculum on archaeological preservation issues for New Mexico colleges.
    While that was going on, Young was also involved in an undercover sting operation to catch a Colorado man named Peter Leon in an illegal purchase.
    Several of the experts assisting with the curriculum watched from a balcony of the Hilton Hotel in Santa Fe as Young worked undercover in the parking lot.
    "(The deal) was going to occur in the parking lot at (my) tailgate," Young said. "(Leon) didn't like doing the deed out there in the parking lot, and so invited (me) into his motor home."
    Leon was in town for an antique art show at the Hilton Hotel when Young got the goods on him.
    Because NAGPRA states that the equipment used in a crime can be seized, the motor home was soon hauled away, which created quite a buzz at the antiques show.
    Educational materials were also going to be handed out by Young's department at the show, but the seizure was education enough, Young said.
    Anyone interested in the Site Watch program can call (505) 827-6314 or e-mail phillip.young@state.nm.us.