Artifacts-hunting in southeastern Utah is a tradition — but illegal

A federal bust last June of illegal looting of archaeological artifacts in the Four Corners area shocked and outraged the public. Charges were made against 24 people, following a 2½-year probe.

However, "pot hunting," as it is sometimes called, has been done in the area since the 1890s — though innocently for the first seven decades or so, according to Winston Hurst, an archaeologist and researcher in southeastern Utah.

Pot hunting "became the San Juan County mantra," Hurst said Friday afternoon during a presentation at the 57th annual Utah State History Conference in the Salt Lake City Library.

His talk, titled "The Professor's Legacy: Some Insights into Southeastern Utah's Pot Hunting Tradition," revealed how a custom of looting artifacts in the area began in the late 19th century.

Behind that tradition was an effort to stock museums. At first, Americans were trying to match Europeans, with lots of cultural artifacts on display in their museums.

Many ancient treasures at first went to museums outside Utah. Later, that fueled an even stronger effort to get Utah's museums stocked.

The salvagers did not usually keep notes on what they salvaged and therefore damaged the record, Hurst said.

He cited the archaeological-salvage careers of six men in the Blanding area.

"I'm always walking on eggshells with this stuff," he said, cautioning that these late 19th- and early 20th-century "pot hunters" can't be judged by modern philosophies and standards.

However, their salvage methods were random and chaotic. He said one group in Blanding in the 1920s collected 1,500 pots.

But "we have no evidence of any notes," he said.

Still, he said, "there really aren't any villains here … Everyone thought they were doing the right thing."

It wasn't until the 1960s, when Hurst was a college student, that he came to understand that much of what he did as a youth in Blanding contributed to a damaging practice.

"We just did it," he said, explaining that residents routinely shot rabbits and dug in ruins. He said he even collected some old human bones as a youth and recalls them being on a table next to his mother's canned peaches. He believes those bones ended up at a dump. He wishes now that he had known better and respected and buried them properly.