today's find.

Non LDM treaure hunting and Old West history.
pippinwhitepaws
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Post by pippinwhitepaws »

you so love blame games....
an honest question, who has personal experience with earthquakes in the bradshaws, leads you to jump to conclusions i am unfamilar with the geology of the bradshaws...
typical from the resident know it all.
some serious holes in your education and moral upbringing.

again, you evade the topic, and begin snide and useless comementary to hide the ignorance you hold so dearly.

one can only suppose you are one of the twenty five charged in theft of history, or a serious supporter of that behavior.
pippinwhitepaws
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Post by pippinwhitepaws »

Updated: 08/18/2009 06:36:45 PM MDT


A federal magistrate on Tuesday told attorneys to get busy reviewing the evidence in the cases alleging artifact thefts from public lands.

"You need to get with it," Magistrate Samuel Alba warned about a dozen defense lawyers in court representing 20 remaining defendants in the cases.

Alba scheduled a Nov. 23 conference with the attorneys to receive an update on their preparedness and perhaps schedule trial dates.

The attorneys earlier in Tuesday's hearing said they had not yet reviewed all the thousands of pages and reports and untold hours of audio and video recordings made by a confidential informant. Lawyer Scott Williamson, who is representing one of the defendants, explained to Alba that attorneys need to listen to all the recordings because the same informant appears on them throughout.

The defendants, most of whom are from Blanding or Monticello, are accused of removing American Indian artifacts from public land and offering to sell or trade them to an informant who was working for the FBI and Bureau of Land Management. Two people already have pleaded guilty and two others have committed suicide.

[email protected]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Stealing the Past
Recent artifact raids shed light on today’s looting syndicate and the damage it does to New Mexico’s history

By: Laura Paskus 08/19/2009

The haul included everything from arrowheads to pots and pendants. There were woven sandals and ceramic figures. There was even a rare turkey-feather blanket and a female loin cloth.

All told, undercover investigators purchased 256 artifacts worth more than $335,000.

All were illegal.

Using an undercover source, agents from the FBI and the US Bureau of Land Management had spent since November 2006 infiltrating a tight-knit community of looters in the Four Corners area who dig up graves and pillage archaeological sites on public lands, then sell the items they find to dealers and collectors.

But it wasn’t until early June of this year that agents announced their take: Thus far, a total of 24 people have been indicted, 23 arrested and 12 homes searched—including four in Santa Fe.

On June 12, federal agents searched the homes of collectors Forrest Fenn, Thomas Cavaliere, Bill Schenck and Christopher Selser, seeking artifacts their undercover source had learned about during the course of the investigation. Although agents seized certain items—as well as computers, business records and photographs—they have yet to file charges against the four Santa Fe residents (most of the arrestees live in Blanding, Utah).

While recent daily newspaper coverage has focused on those particular raids, Santa Fe figures heavily into the story of archaeological looting for reasons that go beyond the handful of local dealers whose homes were searched.

According to Phil Young, an archaeologist and retired National Park Service special agent, Santa Fe is the “hub of the wheel of the black-market trade” when it comes to illegal artifacts.

Young should know: He has been tracking looters since the early 1990s and has seen their methods and networks evolve and expand.

Of late, looters have become increasingly sophisticated, Young says, using GPS units and Google Earth to locate archaeological sites, and employing front-end loaders and backhoes to unearth remains. Such focused efforts in some ways reflect another important factor when it comes to archaeological looting.

“Historically, the trend has usually been that the amount of looting and vandalism goes up at times when the economy has gone down and, in good economic times, the amount of vandalism and theft goes down,” Young says.

That trend seems to be holding true right now.

“Even here in the Galisteo Basin, within the last year and a half, we’ve had an unauthorized hole put in a place that hadn’t had any holes in 15 years,” he says. “We’ve got that occurring at a historic and prehistoric turquoise mine in the Cerrillos Hills—when times get tough, people get very creative and, a lot of times, the ethical considerations get ignored.”

The issue of ethics can sometimes be a tricky one, especially considering the different views scientists, Native Americans and collectors take when it comes to the value of what lies beneath the soil. But the laws themselves are clear. Federal and New Mexico state laws protect sites, dictate who may excavate them and how, and ensure that no one can turn a profit on the bones—or sacred items—of someone else’s ancestors. That said, the black market in illegal Native American artifacts is an increasingly complex network, one that sometimes overlaps with the drug trade and other crimes—and it’s one that federal investigators are trying to wrestle under control.

Doing so, many say, is crucial to protecting New Mexico’s history.
pippinwhitepaws
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Post by pippinwhitepaws »

SALT LAKE CITY -- With a shovel, garden rake and a tarp, the artifacts dealer explained while digging how the government valued the damage to ancient burial sites by the cubic inch.

By that measure, Vern Crites calculated, he was doing $9,000 worth of damage, according to a secret recording made by a government informant.

Crites, a 74-year-old antiquities dealer from Durango, Colo., surrendered his vast collection Wednesday, the second defendant to do so in a sweeping federal investigation of looting and grave-robbing in the Four Corners region.

The case peeled open the murky world of American Indian artifacts trafficking. Crites was recorded discussing exploits of digging by moonlight or in camouflage, and tagging items with a code of origin only he could decipher. In June, Crites and his wife were among 25 people arrested in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Along with others, the couple has pleaded not guilty.

"It's enormously traumatic for them," said Wally Bugden, a Salt Lake City lawyer representing Vern Crites. "He's collected artifacts for 50-plus years, as have many people in the Four Corners area. Whether they were legally obtained or not is obviously the issue."

Under indictment for trafficking, theft and grave desecration, Crites agreed to turn over his entire collection without the promise of a plea deal, federal authorities said Wednesday as agents, archaeologists and curators worked into the night to photograph, wrap and box up thousands of artifacts. The government brought in five moving vans to haul them away.

The surrender, together with a similar hand-over earlier this summer by Jeanne Redd of Blanding, Utah, recovers some of the biggest personal collections at the center of a 2 1/2-year sting operation.

Vern and Marie Crites left their house Wednesday with the arrival of federal agents. Last week, Marie Crites told The Associated Press she had no comment -- except to complain that during her arrest in June, she was thrown into jail in handcuffs and denied a bathroom visit.

Vern Crites described much of his collection in a series of visits with the undercover operative throughout 2007 and 2008. Characterized by other players as a major dealer and "price-setter," he bragged of having sold pottery collections worth $500,000 a set, according to search warrant affidavits.

Crites traded $4,800 of artifacts with the undercover operative Aug. 27, 2008, the documents say.

His most precious items, however, were not for sale.

The papers say Crites carefully guarded a collection of sacred Pueblo prayer sticks, telling the informant he could not reveal how he obtained them and wouldn't sell any for fear they could be traced back.

Utah state archaeologist Kevin Jones said Pueblo prayer sticks "are just simply not available for sale or to outsiders.

"It would be like taking the chalice out of a Catholic church," Jones said. "They're anointed, sacred objects still in use for ceremonies."

Crites also revealed to the government informant that in a 1986 raid, federal agents took 32 of his pots but overlooked a hidden safe and the most damning evidence -- a ledger of a lifetime of trading that named people he dealt with. He also was recorded saying the safe contained a mummified eagle.

On Sept. 14, 2008, the informant watched Crites dig up the ancient burial site, kicking out a skull on the third shovelful. Spooked, Crites and another man covered up the remains without recovering any artifacts.

"Wish that fella had still been intact, the skeleton I mean," Crites was recorded saying at a site in San Juan County, Utah.
Joe Ribaudo
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No Games.......

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

pip,

"you so love blame games....
an honest question, who has personal experience with earthquakes in the bradshaws, leads you to jump to conclusions i am unfamilar with the geology of the bradshaws...
typical from the resident know it all.
some serious holes in your education and moral upbringing."


Let's see. You started with this:

[only a 3.1...but anyone ever here of a quake in there before...in recent memory?

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/rec ... 3.-111.php]

Followed by this:

[so, no one thinks it is odd to have an earthquake in the bradshaws?]

Ending with this:

[no camo...it was on the usgs earthquake site....i was sitting there and poof...red dot appears in the bradshaws?
not a word on the news.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/index.php]

_____________________________________

All of which, to an English speaker, might indicate that you find the earthquake "odd", unusual and newsworthy. I assume you read that in a different way, which might indicate that English is a second language for you.

As for jumping to conclusions, you are the champion in that field. I based my conclusions for the things I mentioned, on your posts here, on Peter's Forum and TNet since Dec. 2007. You were chased off by the cold shoulder treatment from the members of the last two sites, and can't carry on a normal conversation here.

Since you keep coming back, when they let you out, I choose to treat you with copious doses of reality, sprinkled with the occasional stinging slap to the face. Despite your protests, I believe you feel better for all of that. Why else would you keep returning? Don't take it so hard, as it's not your fault. How's that for no blame?

My guess is that you have been told how brilliant you were since you were a small child. You have always been told there are no limitations to your abilities. Each and everyone of those people have lied to you. You are limited and you are less than brilliant. That is the reality of the situation, and your final treatment.....for now.

Best,

Joe Ribaudo
Joe Ribaudo
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Cut and Paste Intelligence......

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

p.s.

Forgot to ask........Does it make you feel superior and really clever to cut and paste so many other people's intellectual thoughts? Does that, somehow, make you feel like you are one of their peers? That you and they are simpatico?

Just curious.......

Joe Ribaudo
pippinwhitepaws
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Post by pippinwhitepaws »

poor thing, just can not post to a topic can you?

grave robbing and theft is acceptable as long as you can insult and degrad people.
Somehiker
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Re: today's find.

Post by Somehiker »

Interesting:

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoen ... tk2Qg.cspx

Hopefully they will run a comparative on samples of "varnish" scrapings from petroglyphs of known age and origin.............
but the statement of "not a chance" by Ron Dorn suggests that a determination has already been selected from the playbook.

Regards:SH
Cubfan64
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Re: today's find.

Post by Cubfan64 »

Somehiker wrote:Interesting:

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoen ... tk2Qg.cspx

Hopefully they will run a comparative on samples of "varnish" scrapings from petroglyphs of known age and origin.............
but the statement of "not a chance" by Ron Dorn suggests that a determination has already been selected from the playbook.

Regards:SH

Hi SH - I haven't forgotten to send you some information from my "explorations" last fall - just can't seen to find time to put everything together into the format I want. It's still on my ever growing list of things "to do."

As far as the story itself is concerned, personally I think it's just as easy for a professional to bias his results as it is a layperson, and it always bothers me when the person collecting the "sample" is the same person that analyzes it and already has formed an opinion.

The right way to do it would be to collect the sample and hand it over to a lab/investigator with only limited information as to the source and leave the analyst to do their job without any bias.
Somehiker
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Re: today's find.

Post by Somehiker »

And Greetings to you Paul:
As I stated "ahem" a while back,no rush. :wink: I'm sure that the wait will be worth the results.What may,at the time,be dismissed as inconsequential can,at a later stage in the hunt be all important.Likewise,such a statement as expressed by Ron Dorn can,at a later stage as well,be recorded as a footnote on his professional resume.A few of those and your back to flippin burgers or mowing grass for a living.Then again,there's always politics. :roll:
I agree on the methodology that you suggest as ideal.Unfortunately,as with the current revelations re:climate science,a sheepskin outranks a technician's certificate,and it will be the presiding professional that will make the final determination in any case.It will be interesting to see what he has to say.

Regards:SH
Somehiker
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Re: today's find.

Post by Somehiker »

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67J0PN20100820

Then again,what if them stone maps are genuine and lead to a large cache of similar bars? Can't imagine that thievery such as this is a modern phenomenon.With the number of folks involved in processing and delivery to the docks,I would guess that there were more than a few opportunities for ethical detours by those handling the product.A "blind eye" or two at the mint would have been possible as well,especially when affected by religious loyalties.

Regards:SH.
Somehiker
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Re: today's find.

Post by Somehiker »

The results.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1560110865/
The DeNiza segment begins at 35:15

There is some question as to the testing methodology,however.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5372/2041.full

Regards:SH
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djui5
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Re: today's find.

Post by djui5 »

That's incredible. Fisher was a very lucky man to find something like that. Its funny how everyone talks about the lost ship wrecks, but no one ever asks where the hell the Spanish found all of that Gold.
Randy Wright
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"I don't care if it has electric windows. I don't care if the door gaps are straight, but when the driver steps on the gas I want him to piss his pants."
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Re: today's find.

Post by Somehiker »

Hi Randy:
The Atocha was only one ship of the hundreds that carried the booty from west to east across the Atlantic.From "The History of the Atocha"
"For the 1622 return voyage, Atocha was loaded with a cargo that is, today, almost beyond belief -- 24 tons of silver bullion in 1038 ingots, 180,00 pesos of silver coins, 582 copper ingots, 125 gold bars and discs, 350 chests of indigo, 525 bales of tobacco, 20 bronze cannon and 1,200 pounds of worked silverware! To this can be added items being smuggled to avoid taxation, and unregistered jewelry and personal goods; all creating a treasure that could surely rival any other ever amassed."
With the climbing price of gold and silver,as well as the collector value of most of the artifacts,some are placing the current value at over $3.7 B.

http://www.melfisher.org/treasurechest.htm

I don't have the dimensions of the Atocha handy,but she wasn't that big by today's standards.The entire cargo could have been stuffed into a space about the size of a single car garage,with room for a couple of atv's left over.

Regards:Wayne
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djui5
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Re: today's find.

Post by djui5 »

Exactly. No mention of where they got that booty. The coins are self explanatory, but where did they acquire the rest?
Randy Wright
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Mesa, AZ

"I don't care if it has electric windows. I don't care if the door gaps are straight, but when the driver steps on the gas I want him to piss his pants."
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Re: today's find.

Post by Somehiker »

Exactly what keeps the dream alive,I guess.
Even in this day of rapid transit and even faster communication between various branches of government,we constantly discover that large quantities of funds "go missing",sometimes without a trace.Be it UN relief cash or Stimulus earmarks,auditors are unable to explain how so much simply vanishes under the radar of oversight.The amounts "diverted" only increase exponentially with the amounts available and the number of people involved.To deny that the old world was any different than the new is folly,IMO.

Regards:SH.
Cubfan64
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Re: today's find.

Post by Cubfan64 »

Greed is greed is greed, etc...
pippinwhitepaws
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Re: today's find.

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