ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 2, 1995 TAG: 9512040014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL B. BARBER
AS ONE involved on a daily basis in the management of archaeological resources on federal lands, I feel obligated to reply to the recent diatribe by Bob Baird (Nov. 19 commentary, ``Why we can't wait for the archaeologists'') concerning metal-detecting vandalism. While I cannot fathom his allusions to Waco and Ruby Ridge, his references to federal law-enforcement officers becoming increasingly concerned with the blatant and deliberate destruction of America's past is quite true.
Hardly a day passes that I don't hear of the arrest, fine and/or imprisonment of some looter on federal property. This, however, isn't a new crime (as Baird contends), but dates back to the Antiquities Act of 1906, with healthy reinforcement by President Nixon's Executive Order 11593 in 1972 and by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. Although Baird may not agree, the president and the U.S. Congress saw fit to protect archaeological resources on federal lands. Commensurate state laws protect such sites on state lands, in caves and rock shelters, and any area where a human burial has occurred.
I agree with his assessment that "archaeological procedure is one of the slowest ways to remove anything." While glacial and geologic time clocks run slower, archaeology is meticulous, time-consuming work. Now why would that be? In essence, because that's what it takes. The archaeological resource is fragile, complicated and nonrenewable. To deal with it, one must record the site in precise terms. Relationships of artifacts, hearths, walls, storage pits, post molds and, yes, any metal artifacts must be mapped, drawn and photographed before removal. The point is that the relationships between artifacts and other cultural features are what's important, not just the artifact itself. It's through these relationships that extinct cultures are reconstructed. Artifacts out of context, such as those indiscriminately removed by metal-detector looting, lack integrity and scientific value, and information on our past is destroyed forever.
Although packed with minor interpretive flaws, Baird's arguments are plagued by two major flaws.
First is the premise that metal artifacts on sites will soon disappear. To put it bluntly, they only readily disappear when they're removed by humans, usually through metal detecting for private collections and for sale. Most metal artifacts survive for millennia. If metal artifacts corrode and disappear so quickly, why are iron, lead, copper and brass artifacts so numerous in the collections from the Jamestown excavations and other early 17th-century colonial sites? How, then, could we possibly track the Iron, Bronze and Copper Ages in Europe, which extend backward in time thousands of years? Or how could archaeologists determine the trade networks in Native American copper 1,500 years ago?
The obvious answer is that metal doesn't instantaneously self-destruct because some archaeologist hasn't excavated it. As most sites currently destroyed by metal-detecting looters within the Great Valley of Virginia are Civil War era, metals can be expected to survive in the ground for hundreds if not thousands of years into the future. The argument that we should currently destroy important information on our past because it might disappear 1,000 years from now cannot be logically supported.
The second major flaw rests with the concept that metal-detecting looters are somehow saving the past when, in fact, they're destroying it. Removing artifacts from their historic context is wholesale destruction, pure and simple. When a metal object is no longer where the Native American, the frontier homesteader or the Civil War soldier left it, it has lost its scientific value.
And why are these irreplaceable resources disappearing? Because metal-detecting looters remove artifacts for their private collections and, more often, for sale. Portions of the nation's past are destroyed for personal monetary gain. The argument posed that removal from historic context is "saving" the artifact rings hollow. The destruction of the past is the destruction of the past.
As Baird states, "the patience of archaeologists is remarkable." However, such patience isn't all-encompassing. I have no patience for looters on public lands, and will do all in my power to see such felons behind bars. These criminals can receive 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine, plus civil penalties for site evaluation and stabilization. As for the efforts of the Central Virginia Relic Hunters Association to "recover relics" on lands managed by a private trust, the land managers should be aware of their potential complacency in the destruction of the nation's past. Unfortunately, this activity isn't illegal. It's only morally reprehensible.
Michael B. Barber, of Salem, is an archaeologist and past president of the Council of Virginia Archaeologists.
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