Posted on 06/19/2009 1:28:21 PM PDT by GSWarrior
Easy money, sleepless nights lure users, cultural expert says
Western Colorado is far from immune to the looting such as that alleged by federal agents after the arrests last week of 24 people in southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado.
There’s a modern twist, however, to the looting that western Colorado and other officials have noted of late: methamphetamine.
Law enforcement officials declined to elaborate on incidents in which they have noted the connection between looted sites and meth use, but archaeologists and law enforcement officials said they are aware of the connections.
Looting and methamphetamine use have more in common than might seem, said an archaeologist who conducts similar investigations on looting in the Southwest.
“There is definitely a relationship. When people are on meth, they don’t sleep, so they can find a site and dig it up at night,” said Chuck Wheeler, vice president of Western Cultural Resource Management, which is based in Boulder and has offices in Farmington, N.M., where Wheeler is based. “If you ask the cops, every one of them knows that when you’re going in on a search warrant, you’re going to find firearms, drugs and looted artifacts.”
Although drugs such as meth have not been cited in the most recent arrests, the connection is growing more common and for an easy reason, Wheeler said.
“It’s easy money” for anyone with the right connections to what is an international market for artifacts such as those that can be found in the camps, rock structures and other sites.
Witness the $385,000 paid for 200 artifacts in the Four Corners investigation, he said.
Collecting artifacts from federal lands has been illegal since 1906, but there is plenty of land across the Southwest and western Colorado that could be targeted for looting.
Of the 2 million acres administered by the Grand Junction Office of the Bureau of Land Management, only 10 to 15 percent has been surveyed for evidence of previous human presence, archaeologist Aline LaForge said.
Large percentages of the known sites have been marked by vandalism, from looting to graffiti to scratching over ancient rock art, LaForge said.
Looting not only disturbs “a cultural heritage that belongs to everybody,” LaForge said, it hampers efforts to determine how long artifacts have lain at the sites and to deduce what cultures left them behind.
“When people walk off with artifacts, they not only destroy the science, but they destroy the experience of discovery for the next person,” she said.
The Museum of the West in downtown Grand Junction has the world’s 12th-largest collection of pots from the Mimbres people, which it received as the result of a looting investigation in Arizona.
The collection, including the “Grandmother Pot,” which illustrates a portion of Mimbres legend, came into the museum’s possession as the result of a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, which could only turn the collection over to an accredited museum, said Dave Bailey, Museum of the West curator of history.
Museum officials have noted the designs on the pieces in the museum collection can be seen on other pieces marketed legally as reproductions.
Once sold, though, “they can be sold to people that aren’t savvy” as originals, and no one is the wiser, Bailey said.
Breaking bad?
Love that show. What a bizarre ending to season two.
Meth head artifact ping!
I think this article would get a D+ in a high school writing class. It would have forty years ago anyway.
It’s really clunky and doesn’t give much detail about these artifacts.
Yes it is. No complaint about your posting the article but it is sad that this passes for journalism even in a small town newspaper. Grand Junction isn’t that small these days either.
I used to deliver that newspaper door to door in my youth.
I bet Grand Junction was a great place to grow up. If you liked the outdoors that is. I grew up in Aurora CO. That was pretty good. We were right on the eastern edge of town where there were open fields, some virgin prairie and a creek with lots of cottonwoods. No mountains or fishing without a car trip though.
How many kids, or adults for that matter, have seen never seen the beauty of a nighttime sky in the country on a cloudless, moonless night?
I had to open up my CO Atlas to see if DeBeque was in CO. Not too many CO place names I haven’t heard of. Fantastic! Right on the CO River. I can only imagine the possible adventures in a place like that. Even today at my somewhat advanced age. lol
That show gives a whole new meaning to "better living through chemistry."
"There is definitely a relationship. When people are on meth, they don't sleep, so they can find a site and dig it up at night," said Chuck Wheeler, vice president of Western Cultural Resource Management...and of course, they buy a lot of lithium batteries and Drano, so they never have working watches, and the drains at home are clogged, so they dig a lot of latrines.
In my younger years rafting the Colorado River with a large group of friends, a guide and a picnic lunch was the ultimate in fun.
Oh, I bet it was. I was lucky enough to go on rafting/camping trip on the Green River in WY when I was about 15. It was the upper part of the river so no really big water but terrific fun nonetheless.
Whoops! Thanks JennysCool!
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False alarm.
No artifacts were raided or detected.
That GKC is brilliant.
Meth is a big problem throughout the midwest. We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s prevelent in other parts of the country.
Meth tends not to be a urban-selling drug. You see alot of this in Alabama and Mississippi...small towns...some guy will working shift work and need a “boost”. His buddy will suggest this...and off starts the habit.
Meth users don’t have the ability to reason or think over what they are doing. In my dad’s area...they had some guy who was passing a car on a country road...and the slower car driver flipped him off. The meth dude drove on up for three or four miles...stopped and waited for the guy to arrive at that point...then shot and killed the guy on the road. No hesitation...and the two likely know each other to some minor degree.
At least the meth craze has sparked on excellent tv show. ‘Breaking Bad’ on AMC.
I’m glad it happens mostly in more rural areas, away from me.
I had a boss who used to send his staff into Philly onlyt in the morning, since “the threats don’t get up til after noon.”
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