About a
year before I retired from the National Park Service, to take a position as an
archaeologist with the State of New Mexico, I attended an INTERPOL/UNESCO
conference on stolen art & artifacts in Mexico City. It had international
appeal and was attended by authorities from all over the Americas and the
globe. In retrospect, I was humbled in that I was allowed to speak on behalf of
the United Stated of America (yep, the kid-from-the-kennels in Burbank & Malibu
had done OK).
I continue to give a THANK YOU to
all the heritage protectors and warriors out there safeguarding our
patrimony. Your efforts are greatly appreciated (even if not widely
acknowledged). I recently tried to pay a visit on-line to the archived CRM
bulletin that the National Park Service had published about “Looting a Global
Crisis” at http://crm.cr.nps.gov/issue.cfm?volume=25&number=02 (NOTE: new location just brought to my attention: http://npshistory.com/newsletters/crm/crm-v25n2.pdf (muchas gracias a Kevin Doyle)
Unfortunately, the "old" link appeared to be no longer operating: que lastima! It had some good articles.
At first-blush, this could be seen as analogous to the condition of cultural
resource protection efforts worldwide, as our precious non-renewable cultural
materials are being ripped from their contextual womb, with the plunder feeding
the black market for illegal art and antiquity. Happy to see it is still available...
Much has changed since the publication of this theme CRM edition. Some good,
and some not-so-good for our world’s heritage. Some of the positive
developments include international organizations, like: “Saving Antiquities For
Everyone” (SAFE)
I’m most familiar with the New Mexico SiteWatch steward program; as the
former State Coordinator, I helped it grow. Based on the model-program
developed in Arizona, it is a confederation of local volunteers that provide
additional eyes-and-ears for land managers and owners. Most of the work is on
Federal or State/County lands, but some is on private property. Always with the
written authority and permission of the land manager/owner (who are often overstretched
& overworked).
Our stewards visit archaeological &
historic sites, reporting back to their agency resource contact the present
status and condition of the area: they “FIND IT-RECORD IT-REPORT IT”. They are not
police officers, but as resource monitors-stewards we are trained to operate
with safety as our key component. Sometimes we arrive in an area to
find a cultural crime or activity in progress. In these cases, we need to know what-to-do: withdraw and
contact our law enforcement authorities immediately. It is an unfortunate fact that there is often
a nexus between present-day looting here and meth-amphetamine use with
drug trafficking (it is a very destructive cycle: diggers destroy the
scientific potential of sites to obtain objects to trade for more drugs…). The
benefits of local site stewards are multiple: as the saying goes “all
preservation is local” and with community buy-in there is a stronger vested interest;
protection of real and potential heritage tourism is also a major factor that should not be discounted (who is going to pay to travel to see a pillaged landscape of holes?); and it is simply “the right thing to do” (pass along to
our future generations what our ancestors have provided for us).
A few years back there was an email
from a metal detector “hobbyist” who enjoyed going onto public lands in his
quest to find (plunder really) heritage resources from historic sites and
districts. He was bemoaning the fact that he was being displaced from public places (with antiquities & cultural properties protected by law) because there
were “too damn many site stewards” out there now. In actuality, he should have thanked them for
preventing him from continuing to commit serial felonies (violations of the
Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, etc.). To this, I give a tip-of-the-sombrero
to ALL the volunteers out there protecting our patrimony, like those involved
with these programs.
Arizona Site Stewards
NW New Mexico Site Stewards/SiteWatch NW Chapter
Santa Fe National Forest Site Stewards
Site Steward
Foundation
(Providing help & support to site steward organizations
in New Mexico)
Of course there are many other
local programs out there. I salute them ALL. Some of the common elements
include: local surveillance (sometimes with electronic equipment), coordination
with law enforcement, education-Education-EDUCATION (public out-reach is
critical). Keep-up the good works amigos, y gracias por todos…
