Staggering artifact collection....with bones

[OntarioArch]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/f...izing-trove-of-artifacts-from-home/ar-BBU6oRA

 

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[arrow86]

Wow, that’s unreal

 

[dognose]

"When I first went into his house and saw the size of the collection, it was unlike anything we'd ever seen," Tim Carpenter, who heads the FBI's art crime unit.


I don't think these folks have ever been to a large relic show.




I knew Don, but not very well. He worked at Naval Avionic in Indianapolis where my dad also worked for 36 years, and a few other cousins worked there also for many years. My neighbor also worked at Naval Avionic and photographed Dons collection a number of years ago.


I used to talk to Don at auctions, he was a friendly guy who likely collected the majority of the items now being returned long before the modern laws were passed. I agree that keeping of the bones and digging in a burial area was not right. From the article and Dons activities sharing his collection, he did not try to keep his collection a secret.

Interestingly enough, utube has many recent (within the last 10 years to current) videos of folks digging for relics.

 

[joshuaream]

Skeletons in the closet... Skulls were a pretty common curio item for many early collectors, it is wrong by today’s standards but flip through some early collector books (when archaeologists and collectors were pretty much the same) and you see a lot of skeletons. It wasn’t uncommon for museums to ask collectors to get them remains for study and display. My high school used to have a display of relics and bones on display that were found when building the school.

Times change, but Don wasn’t a bad man. The was a time when guys like Glenn Black, Eli Lilly and other key figures in Indiana archaeology would have had collections similar to his and probably asked him to loan/trade items which I’m sure he would have willingly done.

 

[Upham]

I like bones. I collect them when I find them lying on the ground. No human.

 

[sandchip]

This chicks comments were unnecessary:

[FONT=&quot]"This comes down to a basic human right," said Holly Cusack-McVeigh, a professor of archaeology brought in by the FBI on the Miller case. "We have to think about the context [/FONT]of:[FONT=&quot] Who has been the target of grave robbing for centuries? Whose ancestors have been collected for [/FONT]hobby[FONT=&quot]?" Cusack-McVeigh said. "And this comes down to racism. They aren't digging white graves."[/FONT]

Sure the collection of human bones was wrong, but was it was common back then and hardly racist but unfortunately, some people see everything through a prism of color. It would seem more of a compliment to the Indians that someone would be so fascinated by them. This mindset is no different from the uproar over naming sports teams after our nation's first inhabitants, many of whom were fierce warriors. You sure aren't gonna name your team after a bunch of wimps.

 

[boogeyman]

This chicks comments were unnecessary:

"This comes down to a basic human right," said Holly Cusack-McVeigh, a professor of archaeology brought in by the FBI on the Miller case. "We have to think about the context of: Who has been the target of grave robbing for centuries? Whose ancestors have been collected for hobby?" Cusack-McVeigh said. "And this comes down to racism. They aren't digging white graves."

Sure the collection of human bones was wrong, but was it was common back then and hardly racist but unfortunately, some people see everything through a prism of color. It would seem more of a compliment to the Indians that someone would be so fascinated by them. This mindset is no different from the uproar over naming sports teams after our nation's first inhabitants, many of whom were fierce warriors. You sure aren't gonna name your team after a bunch of wimps.

Yeah, they had to throw out the R word. "a professor of archaeology brought in by the FBI" about said it all for me. In this day & age the R word is thrown out there for most everything someone doesn't like whether it applies or not. Too bad he didn't see this raid coming so he could package it all up & send some to every museum, historical society & school known to man! Imagine the look on her & the FBIs faces when he opened the door & said, "Sorry you're too late. It's all been donated to educational institutions." What da ya wanna bet 98% of it all ends up in the basement at Smithsonian because it's too costly to catalog & (wait for it!) they don't have the man power? Any takers on that bet?

 

[ToddsPoint]

Holly Cusack-McVeigh

Never trust a hyphenated American! Gary

 

[quito]

A small town near the Missouri River here had a little bait shop along the Hiway that went through town. It was often just pay on the honor system if nobody was there. I remember back I the 70’s on top of the refrigerator they had a skull sitting there on display.

 

[dognose]

Latest update from Indianapolis
Source WTHR
Cache of artifacts found in Indiana to be returned to China

PUBLISHED: FEB 27TH, 2019 - 8:07PM (EST)UPDATED: FEB 28TH, 2019 - 3:59AM (EST)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The FBI is returning more than 300 cultural artifacts to China years after they were part of a vast collection discovered at a central Indiana farm.


Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai is expected to attend Thursday's repatriation ceremony at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis when the 361 artifacts are returned to Chinese officials.


The artifacts were among thousands ranging from arrowheads to shrunken heads that federal agents removed in 2014 from a man's Shelby County farm.


That man, Don Miller, amassed the collection over several decades. He died in 2015 at age 91.


The FBI says artifacts have been returned to several countries, including Colombia, New Zealand and Spain, but it continues working with Native American tribes and foreign governments to determine their claims to any of the objects.

 

[sandchip]

Never trust a hyphenated American! Gary

You got That-Right! I wonder if these folks ever stop to consider that if their Smith-Jones child marries one of those Martin-Jenkins kids an has a bunch of Smith-Jones-Martin-Jenkins young'uns, and then what if little Fred Smith-Jones-Martin-Jenkins decides to marry that Sally Rogers-Brown-Poole-Waters girl?

 

[uniface]

I wonder if these folks ever stop to consider that if their Smith-Jones child marries one of those Martin-Jenkins kids an has a bunch of Smith-Jones-Martin-Jenkins young'uns, and then what if little Fred Smith-Jones-Martin-Jenkins decides to marry that Sally Rogers-Brown-Poole-Waters girl?

Good way to keep track of who's kin too close to hitch up with.

 

[CaptEsteban]

Yeah, they had to throw out the R word. "a professor of archaeology brought in by the FBI" about said it all for me. In this day & age the R word is thrown out there for most everything someone doesn't like whether it applies or not. Too bad he didn't see this raid coming so he could package it all up & send some to every museum, historical society & school known to man! Imagine the look on her & the FBIs faces when he opened the door & said, "Sorry you're too late. It's all been donated to educational institutions." What da ya wanna bet 98% of it all ends up in the basement at Smithsonian because it's too costly to catalog & (wait for it!) they don't have the man power? Any takers on that bet?

Much like the head of Osceola , the Seminole Chief . When he died, someone kept his head & they buried his body at Ft. Moutrie, in S.C. The tribe did not want his desecrated body back.

 

[Plumbata]

I'm glad to see y'all caught the hyphenated-leftist anthropologist's facile claim of "racism", I had to hear stupid crap like that all the time when studying Anthropology/Archaeology and can only imagine how much worse that narrative-pushing is now.

I posted this elsewhere before realizing you had a discussion in this subforum:

It comes down to availability and access, racism has absolutely nothing to do with it. The graves of classical European civilizations (including Egypt, the Pharaohs were genetically European too) have been the primary target for 400 years, not the graves of poor stone-age primitives. Just because we hear more about Kentucky and Tennessee Meth-heads digging a mound here or there than we hear about Turks razing whole Greek and Roman cities to the ground in search of treasures it doesn't mean that the tombs of racist whitey haven't always been the favorite target.

And while I was horrified when I first heard this story, it's not all bad. Apparently the guy didn't have a good eye for stuff he didn't loot personally and had a collection full of fakes, take a look at this ridiculous modern junk:

View attachment 1685833

View attachment 1685834


Even funnier is how the 'tards at the FBI art crime division apparently can't tell instantly that such items are modern Chinese forgeries, and thus they were highlighted in the news story as examples of his heinous theft of cultural heritage. What a bunch of chuckleheads!

I'd like to see the other "artifacts" in his collection, he probably had a great eye for North American native artifacts but judging from the fakes that slipped through I bet thousands of his pieces are bogus.