Ancient (American) Indian settlement found

[littlemissattitude]

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of ancient Indian settlements so remarkably well-preserved that arrowheads and beads are still lying out in the open.

Archaeologists are calling it one of the most spectacular finds in the West.

Hidden deep inside Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles from Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles and include hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground, rock shelters, and the mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants.

The site was occupied for at least 3,000 years until it abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, when the Fremont people mysteriously vanished.

What sets this ancient site apart from other, better-known ones in Utah, Arizona or Colorado is that it has been left virtually untouched by looters, with the ground still littered with arrowheads, arrow shafts, beads and pottery shards in places.

Read the whole story at: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/06/24/ancient.find.ap/index.html

This is just too cool. This guy safeguarded this collection of sites from archaeological poachers for more than 50 years, at a time when Native American artifacts are extremely valuable on the black market. There are years and years worth of work for archaeologists here, and potentially a lot of new knowledge.

Of course, as could have been predicted, some in the Native American community are upset that they weren't told about the find before news reports of the find leaked out. However, no excavations have yet been done on the site, such notification usually takes place, according to the article - as well as according to what I've learned in archaeology and anthropology classes - when work begins on a site. I can see how the tribes would want to know, when it is possible that these are their ancestors. However, I can see the point that until the find was made public, the fewer people who knew, the better. The more people who knew, the more of a chance that world would get to the grave robbers, and that would have been that. The director of Utah's Division of Indian Affiars, a Ute Indian himself is quoted as saying that "I do support scientific study that leads to better understanding of humanity, but you have to do it in a diplomatic way." But IMO, keeping the site secret and safe from robbers is more diplomatic than risking robbers going in and desecrating human remains in an effort to get at saleable artifacts.

Read about this aspect of the story at: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/02/ancient.find.ap/index.html

 

[Brian G Turner]

Interesting: the BBC says archaeologists have been digging on the site for the last two years:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3857761.stm

Hundreds of almost perfectly preserved artefacts used by native Americans 4,500 years ago have been uncovered in the western US state of Utah. Granaries, pottery and tools used by Fremont people are scattered along a creek on a ranch located 210km (130 miles) south-east of Salt Lake City.

The sites were kept a secret for over 50 years, in an effort to protect them.

The privately-owned ranch has now been turned over to the state of Utah, and will eventually open to visitors.



Although the existence of the sites in a canyon along Range Creek has not been made public until now, archaeologists have been surveying them for the past two years.

 

[littlemissattitude]

Well, surveying and actually digging are two completely different things. It is possible, especially in that sort of desert environment, to find artifacts laying out on the surface without having to dig for them at all. And I don't think that the laws pertaining to archaeological finds of Native Americans speak to artifacts, but just to the recovery and reburial of human remains. I could be wrong about that, but that was the impression I was left with in classes I've taken where we have discussed this issue.

And, unfortunately, some Native Americans use the laws not to make sure that any human remains that are found are treated with respect, but to try to protect their beliefs concerning their creation/origins. I have heard it said that no study of Native American remains to determine origins should be carried out, because, I believe the statement was something to the effect that "we already know where we came from, and it wasn't Asia". That is kind of like Christian creationists demanding that all work on fossil human and pre-human forms be prohibited because the book of Genesis says all that there is to say about the origin of humans. And in fact, the folks that hold the position that no work at all should be done on Native American remains have been characterized as "Indian creationists" by some.

It's really a difficult issue here in the States. I don't think there are any archaeologists who want to treat Native American remains as just objects. But there is a great deal of frustration among archaeologists because some Native Americans demand immediate reburial of remains without even allowing any measurements of those remains to be taken.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Ah - I see - much clearer now.

And such a sad state of affairs.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

I have to say that I would have looted the site, my obsession with native american indians has not waned one bit....

 

[Tsujigiri]

I have to say that I would have looted the site, my obsession with native american indians has not waned one bit....

I know that I may regret asking....but why are are you obsessed with Native American Indians?