Comments about ‘Let ordinary people collect artifacts’

These artifacts are not simply objects like rocks, petrified wood, and decorative driftwood. When you're dealing with human artifacts suddenly you have to consider culture, political sensitivities, and even the LAW.

When you or your relatives die does that mean it's open season on your stuff. Ordinary people in your neighborhood should just be allowed to wander over to your house and start picking through your stuff?

How about they come with shovels to your grave start tossing your bones around looking for heirloom jewelry, ceremonial burial clothing, or toys or trinkets you were buried with?

What are the considerations we have as a soceity for the past? Is that only the whites or contemporary humans or do our values concerning how we treat the dead and the past different for different peoples?

Think of all the revelations that will never be had because people have stolen artifacts. Untrained eyes cannot tell the difference between "just another arrowhead" and something very important to our understanding of the people before us.

Grave robbing is a whole other monster. What kind of person does it take to desecrate a grave simply for their own gain? Yes, scientists dig up ancient graves all the time but with an air of respect and they try not to unduly disturb the site.

Grave-robbing? They were cannibals, then threw the bones in the trash piles.

Because they are the cultural remains of native peoples.

Is it really that difficult to understand you are grave robbing? If you had any respect for native americans or their culture or their ancestors you would understand that.

This is one of the most absurd, narrow-minded and self-serving letters on this topic I've seen. Those artifacts are invaluable for their cultural information content and for the archaeologically and anthropologically uneducated, to say nothing of unauthorized, to remove them from their context is a desecration of history. These thieves of public lands do not remove them for their aesthetics or for legitimate study but for arrogant profit. Thankfully, it is against the law and, for once, the enforcers of the law are taking appropriate action.

And then let's let all people dig up graveyards, too.

I know this isn't the law, but in my mind I draw a line between those who go "hunting" artifacts and selling them, and those found something while enjoying the outdoors on a family outing.

Those who dig and look for artifacts need to be stopped. But I don't see bringing in a swat team to take down a hiker who saw a arrow-head on the trail when hiking and picked it up.

Where are the Hawkins ancestors buried? I'd like to pluck a few items...

"But I don't see bringing in a swat team to take down a hiker who saw a arrow-head on the trail when hiking and picked it up."

It's not about picking up an arrowhead along a trail. It's about deliberate disruption of sites and the removal of archaeological items from public lands. Whether for profit or not, is beside the point. Usually it is for profit.

And I really really doubt that the letter writer could make a pot that would fool an expert for very long.

In my travels, I have come across old farms, cabins, or house foundations that were long (100 years or more) abandoned by their previous owners.

My father used to look around such structures and sort through their old "trash pile" looking for old bottles, coins, or other antique trinkets.

How is salvaging a 100 year old beer bottle from an abandoned farm that much different than digging up a 600 year old clay pot?

and you can pick up anything you want. However you don't own public lands. Taking anything you don't own makes you a thief.

I wonder how the LDS people in Blanding would feel if someone dug up graves in the local cemetery and hung the temple clothes of their ancestors up in private homes? I'd wager they would be beating down doors and screaming to get them back. Many Native American groups feel the same way about the objects that have been taken by private collectors over the years. Please stop disturbing burials, especially on public lands.

I am a professional archaeologist and ceramic analyst. I can assure Mr. Hawkins that the raw materials (rocks, clay, and paint) used to manufacture pots in the prehistoric American Southwest are typically quite distinctive. Unless those who manufacture replica vessels use nearly identical technologies and raw materials as the original manufacturers, we can tell the difference between modern and prehistoric ceramic vessels.

We have another fine example of our educational system poorly teaching science. It's not our teachers fault. They are force to swim upstream in a culture were conservatives have marginalized education as well as fairness or trying to be the best (elite).

You have the artifact and the context, which the artifact came from. Scientist document placement as well as items because knowing the placement of artifacts give a context. To understand stories you need to understand context.

Greedy ignorant pot hunters have destroyed much of this context, which is an important part of the story of Native Americans.

This total disregard for Native Americans is an cultural artifact from a majority white Christian culture that believed cleaning America of its native people was part of spreading Christianity West. This may seem funny. These early American Christians believe rain followed the plow too.

Not long ago, in Utah, Native American children were forced from their mothers, families and culture to live in LDS homes. Can I bring up this fact?

We have Utahans from pioneer stock who still see Native Americans as inferior people. This has made pillaging Native American sites as a entitlement.

What the heck is wrong with people like Mr. Hawkins of Bountiful? I don't mean to sound like some Indiana Jones caricature, but private citizens have no business wandering around and collecting whatever artifacts they like from public land to stick on a shelves in their houses. That's how we stunt research, lose cultural understanding, and generally show complete disrespect for the native people of Utah, who've kind of been coming up on the short end of the stick for the better part of 200 years.

My goodness, how selfish people are. It's "neat-o and I want it" might be a reasonable argument when you're six years old on the playground, but we big boys and girls are going to need something a little more grown up to come around to your way of thinking, Mr. Hawkins.

Anonymous | 12:41 p.m.

I have to challenge your lies about the "Indian Placement Program" the LDS church had years ago.

No one was ever "FORCED" from their mothers, family, etc, to live in LDS homes. They were given the "oportunity" to send kids who WANTED and elected to live in LDS homes for a time, to attend school, get culturally aclimated, etc. No one was "Forced" to do it.

You are a farce, just constantly looking for something that can be twisted and turned in a way that will paint the LDS people in a negative light, aren't you?

You're wrong. It was done with the intent to make it look like it was voluntary, but it was forced.

There are so many excellent comments here. I hope that some of you will write your comments in the form of letters to the editor to call more attention to the foolishness and arrogance of the original writer's opinion.

Anonymous @ 3:00 p.m.

How do you know so much about the Indian Placement Program? Any first hand knowledge, or just rumors from your LDS hater friends?

We had serveral indians stay with us for a short time when I was growing up and none of them was forced to be there. It was voluntary for us... and it was voluntary for them. They wrote to their family all the time and never seemed sad (except one). One boy went home early and it was no problem. We went to summer-camp right after he arrived and he satarted getting home sick (which isn't totally unusual for young scouts). The scout master took him home early and he eventually decided to go home to his family. When he wanted to go home he went home. How is that forcing him to come or to stay?

It's not the evil program you are spinning and twisting it into. But who would expect honesty from someone who goes by "Anonymous" when he takes his daily pot-shots at the groups he loves to hate.

It would take millions of pots to supply all interested individuals with "only one pot." Get real.
I don't want the graves of my ancestors robbed. They were early Utah pioneers, and I know the Native Americans feel the same way. This activity is illegal, it should remain illegal, and it should be investigated and prosecuted.