Some landowners even abet the looting, leasing their property to people who mine it using backhoes and mechanized shaker screens. Looting on this level is a professional operation, Deter-Wolf says. The target is not “an arrowhead that you could sell on eBay.”
Not digging it
With little law enforcement devoted to fighting a “victimless crime,” public vigilance may be the best protector of the Cumberland’s shell middens. Despite their vulnerability, Peres says she won’t excavate an entire site unless it is threatened by development. Instead, she and her students collect a few samples, study them, and turn them over to the state. It’s a balancing act, she explains: Peres is purposefully vague about the targeted artifacts, saying only that they are made of bone, stone or shell, and obviously ceremonial. “They have no wear on them, some are larger than life, and they’re put together in caches,” she says. “When they show up on an auction website— I’ve even seen some on craigslist—it’s clear to archeologists that they came out of a burial.” The weak economy seems to have triggered more grave robbing nationally, Peres says. But since her work garnered local media attention, she’s seen “a noticeable decline” along the Cumberland. Now Deter-Wolf gets regular tips about looters from “old-timers” familiar with the river. “Some of those guys may have dug when they were young,” he says, “but now they’ve become part of this avocational community that recognizes the value of archeology.”
“It behooves us as archeologists to be sensitive to cultural resources, but also to get as much information as we can from them, so we can tell the story of these people, because they’ve left no written record. This is all we have left of them.” Modern archeology is more about preservation and documentation than excavation, Deter-Wolf adds. “We realize now that we can’t dig up all the things that are there,” he says. “That’s how you end up with 60-year-old collections that haven’t been analyzed. For the first time, we have controlled samples from these sites that Tanya and her students are processing. That’s a baseline for all kinds of future research.” A number of students are now using the data gathered as a result of the NSF RAPID grant for Anthropology Senior Theses and independent research projects. Deter-Wolf, Hodge, and Peres all
Raising awareness about looting may prove easier than stopping it.
photo: Andy Heidt
photos: J. Intintoli
on government property are legally protected, there is no equal protection regarding private land—often the site of the most egregious grave robbing.
continued on page 28
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