Badger Bart
Sr. Member
- Mar 24, 2005
- 301
- 18
THESE FOLKS ARE YOUR FIERCEST COMPETITORS, THEY WILL SAY AND DO ANYTHING TO KILL YOUR HOBBY...
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/14429270.htm
Posted on Wed, Apr. 26, 2006
Archeologists Decry History Buffs’ Digs
By BRIGID SCHULTE
The Washington Post
The buzz began in the chow line. “Did you hear?” asked one relic hunter.
“Yeah. A Mississippi plate,” said another. “Absolutely perfect.”
The proud new owner of the Confederate belt plate embossed with an eagle held out his treasure on his dirt-caked palm.
A man with a long beard and flannel shirt whistled low. “That’s $12,000 right there.”
It was the prize find of a three-day relic hunt called Diggin’ in Virginia, one of a new breed of organized digs in the history-rich state. More than 200 relic hunters hauled metal detectors up and down the hills of a Culpeper County farm one weekend this spring. They’d paid a couple of hundred bucks each.
“You pull a Minie ball out of the ground, and the first thing that strikes you: The last hands that touched this were the hands of a Civil War soldier,” dig participant Steve Silvia said of a Civil War-era bullet. “It’s about as close as you can get to stepping back in time.”
But to alarmed archaeologists, these “safari” digs — though legal — represent the wholesale destruction of the past. Stripping sites of their artifacts also strips the ability to learn what stories they could tell.
“These digs are like reading a book, ripping the pages out as you read and setting them on fire,” said Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the state’s Department of Historic Resources. “It’s an outrage.”
A Mississippi belt plate alone will tell you nothing, Kilpatrick said. A belt plate whose position is documented in context could help reconstruct the flow of a historic fight, give insight into military strategy or, at a campsite, illuminate soldiers’ living conditions.
Members of the Council of Virginia Archaeologists are protesting to state legislators and other officials and enlisting the aid of local historic preservation groups. They’ve contacted landowners to get them to stop the digs.
Last year in the state’s General Assembly, lawmakers considered a measure that would have required relic hunters to get written permission from landowners before digging, and to catalogue and report what they found. The bill also would have established that relics belonged to the state, not any individual.
It was resoundingly crushed in committee.
Yes, relic hunters concede, there are bad guys — the ones who use night-vision goggles and sneak into protected sites to dig, or the ones who sell what they find on eBay.
But others have such a passion for the past, particularly the Civil War, that they write books on what they find. Some take photographs or use the Global Positioning System to pinpoint what they dug up. Others have donated hundreds of hours to help archaeologists — including using metal detectors to find the site of a Civil War battle near Chantilly, Va., that archaeologists had missed.
Although archaeologists fighting the digs say they understand the thrill of finding an artifact, they point to the excavation of the site of 1876’s Battle of Little Bighorn, Custer’s Last Stand, in Montana. For more than a century, historians held to the U.S. military’s version of events: that Custer rushed in for glory and was crushed by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. They discounted the Native Americans’ very different memory.
National Park Service archaeologist Doug Scott, who enlisted the help of relic hunters, spent years painstakingly mapping where each bullet was found. Using microscopic analysis of firing-pin marks, he traced each bullet to a particular gun and tracked its movement on the battlefield. He discovered the Native Americans were right. Custer had followed military procedure. He was outmanned, outgunned and outfought that day.
“Evidence doesn’t lie,” Scott said. “History may be accurate. But archaeology is precise.”
When a relic hunter dug up 800 cartridges on private property just off the battlefield for souvenirs, Scott was beside himself. “We’re missing the part of the battle that tells us how the warriors and the soldiers all got there.”
Relic hunters say many places they dig have been plowed for 140 years and artifacts have been scattered. “There is no context,” said Diggin’ in Virginia organizer John Kendrick — a point some archaeologists dispute.
At Brandy Rock Farm in Culpeper County, thousands of artifacts were mined on the Diggin’ in Virginia hunt, including the prized Mississippi plate.
One day in the summer of 1863, a Confederate soldier from Mississippi left behind his prized belt plate, worn only by elite members of the state militia.
We will never know why.
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/14429270.htm
Posted on Wed, Apr. 26, 2006
Archeologists Decry History Buffs’ Digs
By BRIGID SCHULTE
The Washington Post
The buzz began in the chow line. “Did you hear?” asked one relic hunter.
“Yeah. A Mississippi plate,” said another. “Absolutely perfect.”
The proud new owner of the Confederate belt plate embossed with an eagle held out his treasure on his dirt-caked palm.
A man with a long beard and flannel shirt whistled low. “That’s $12,000 right there.”
It was the prize find of a three-day relic hunt called Diggin’ in Virginia, one of a new breed of organized digs in the history-rich state. More than 200 relic hunters hauled metal detectors up and down the hills of a Culpeper County farm one weekend this spring. They’d paid a couple of hundred bucks each.
“You pull a Minie ball out of the ground, and the first thing that strikes you: The last hands that touched this were the hands of a Civil War soldier,” dig participant Steve Silvia said of a Civil War-era bullet. “It’s about as close as you can get to stepping back in time.”
But to alarmed archaeologists, these “safari” digs — though legal — represent the wholesale destruction of the past. Stripping sites of their artifacts also strips the ability to learn what stories they could tell.
“These digs are like reading a book, ripping the pages out as you read and setting them on fire,” said Kathleen Kilpatrick, director of the state’s Department of Historic Resources. “It’s an outrage.”
A Mississippi belt plate alone will tell you nothing, Kilpatrick said. A belt plate whose position is documented in context could help reconstruct the flow of a historic fight, give insight into military strategy or, at a campsite, illuminate soldiers’ living conditions.
Members of the Council of Virginia Archaeologists are protesting to state legislators and other officials and enlisting the aid of local historic preservation groups. They’ve contacted landowners to get them to stop the digs.
Last year in the state’s General Assembly, lawmakers considered a measure that would have required relic hunters to get written permission from landowners before digging, and to catalogue and report what they found. The bill also would have established that relics belonged to the state, not any individual.
It was resoundingly crushed in committee.
Yes, relic hunters concede, there are bad guys — the ones who use night-vision goggles and sneak into protected sites to dig, or the ones who sell what they find on eBay.
But others have such a passion for the past, particularly the Civil War, that they write books on what they find. Some take photographs or use the Global Positioning System to pinpoint what they dug up. Others have donated hundreds of hours to help archaeologists — including using metal detectors to find the site of a Civil War battle near Chantilly, Va., that archaeologists had missed.
Although archaeologists fighting the digs say they understand the thrill of finding an artifact, they point to the excavation of the site of 1876’s Battle of Little Bighorn, Custer’s Last Stand, in Montana. For more than a century, historians held to the U.S. military’s version of events: that Custer rushed in for glory and was crushed by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. They discounted the Native Americans’ very different memory.
National Park Service archaeologist Doug Scott, who enlisted the help of relic hunters, spent years painstakingly mapping where each bullet was found. Using microscopic analysis of firing-pin marks, he traced each bullet to a particular gun and tracked its movement on the battlefield. He discovered the Native Americans were right. Custer had followed military procedure. He was outmanned, outgunned and outfought that day.
“Evidence doesn’t lie,” Scott said. “History may be accurate. But archaeology is precise.”
When a relic hunter dug up 800 cartridges on private property just off the battlefield for souvenirs, Scott was beside himself. “We’re missing the part of the battle that tells us how the warriors and the soldiers all got there.”
Relic hunters say many places they dig have been plowed for 140 years and artifacts have been scattered. “There is no context,” said Diggin’ in Virginia organizer John Kendrick — a point some archaeologists dispute.
At Brandy Rock Farm in Culpeper County, thousands of artifacts were mined on the Diggin’ in Virginia hunt, including the prized Mississippi plate.
One day in the summer of 1863, a Confederate soldier from Mississippi left behind his prized belt plate, worn only by elite members of the state militia.
We will never know why.
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