I'm afraid you are misunderstanding this, Steve

Posted by Michaelson from leospace047.utsi.edu on July 18, 2000 at 12:42:15:

In Reply to: This is gonna really piss some of you folks off, but here goes... posted by Steve on July 18, 2000 at 00:13:23:

Speaking my entry alone, my main concern is for the items such as mentioned in Micah's National Geographic report of an entire temple being cut up for the foreign collector market. No one here that I'm aware of is talking about the random picking up of arrow heads in plowed fields, though there are groups who are vehomently against ANYTHING of prehistoric nature, be it of man made or fossil, being removed from it's original position, which I am not one. The big business practice of totally destroying found historical sites for monetary gain is as big now as it ever was in the turn of the 20th Century, probably bigger as there seems to be more disposable cash available, and the "beautiful people" who are looking for just the righ artifact to set in their foyer are willing to pay for those stolen national treasures. Heck, even the National Park Service will chase you with a club if you pick up a spent bullet at a Civil War battle field. It's all in the degree of how you want to look at the collection of an artifact. But no, what you're talking about is not anywhere NEAR the what the topic of concern is that we're discussing here. Regards. Michaelson

: : Bravo Old Bean! I couldn't agree more! Ebay and the like traffic in some interesting cultural treasures of dubious origin. Here in Nebraska we had a problem a few years back with professional paleontological collecting teams stealing fossils from our national state parks. They were funded by some Japanese collectors and had hydraulic lifters capable of removing huge pieces of rock that contained large turtle fossils and the like. I have no beef with minimal surface collecting as long as records are kept. An arrowhead or a fossil here and there is all right. When it gets to pots and other artefacts, that is where it gets unacceptable. I sahre your passion for the past. I am trying to use my passion to convince the Rhodes Scholarship people to give me their award and let me study archaeology at Oxford. In a day and age when everyone is looking forward, a few need to look back.

: : Regards,

: : Don

: Perhaps I am misunderstanding some of the comments made here, but I get the impression that some of you are against the act of collecting chert artifacts, such as arrow heads. Let me tell you a story. I grew up on a farm in Alabama, and our fields were covered with literally tons of arrow heads that surfaced when spring plowing was done. My ancestors had picked these things up for years, and we continued to do so as well. To this day there are still many more there, and they are being broken and crushed by the big tractors that cultivate this land. As a child, I collected these arrowheads, as many people in that part of the state. If these had not been picked up and saved, they would have been destroyed , as tons have been over the years. What would you have done? That these objects have monetary value to some folks, will insure their survival. I therefore, don't see anything wrong with it. regards, Steve

Follow Ups:

OOps, I was afraid I was off track...thanks, and I do agree with the gist of this discussion(nm) Steve 13:08:58 7/18/2000 (0)

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: Speaking my entry alone, my main concern is for the items such as mentioned in Micah's National Geographic report of an entire temple being cut up for the foreign collector market. No one here that I'm aware of is talking about the random picking up of arrow heads in plowed fields, though there are groups who are vehomently against ANYTHING of prehistoric nature, be it of man made or fossil, being removed from it's original position, which I am not one. The big business practice of totally destroying found historical sites for monetary gain is as big now as it ever was in the turn of the 20th Century, probably bigger as there seems to be more disposable cash available, and the "beautiful people" who are looking for just the righ artifact to set in their foyer are willing to pay for those stolen national treasures. Heck, even the National Park Service will chase you with a club if you pick up a spent bullet at a Civil War battle field. It's all in the degree of how you want to look at the collection of an artifact. But no, what you're talking about is not anywhere NEAR the what the topic of concern is that we're discussing here. Regards. Michaelson

: : : Bravo Old Bean!  I couldn't agree more!  Ebay and the like traffic in some interesting cultural treasures of dubious origin.  Here in Nebraska we had a problem a few years back with professional paleontological collecting teams stealing fossils from our national state parks.  They were funded by some Japanese collectors and had hydraulic lifters capable of removing huge pieces of rock that contained large turtle fossils and the like.  I have no beef with minimal surface collecting as long as records are kept.  An arrowhead or a fossil here and there is all right.  When it gets to pots and other artefacts, that is where it gets unacceptable.  I sahre your passion for the past.  I am trying to use my passion to convince the Rhodes Scholarship people to give me their award and let me study archaeology at Oxford.  In a day and age when everyone is looking forward, a few need to look back.

: : : Regards,

: : : 	Don

: : Perhaps I am misunderstanding some of the comments made here, but I get the impression that some of you are against the act of collecting chert artifacts, such as arrow heads. Let me tell you a story. I grew up on a farm in Alabama, and our fields were covered with literally tons of arrow heads that surfaced when spring plowing was done. My ancestors had picked these things up for years, and we continued to do so as well. To this day there are still many more there, and they are being broken and crushed by the big tractors that cultivate this land. As a child, I collected these arrowheads, as many people in that part of the state. If these had not been picked up and saved, they would have been destroyed , as tons have been over the years. What would you have done? That these objects have monetary value to some folks, will insure their survival. I therefore, don't see anything wrong with it.    regards, Steve

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