Training session teaches officers on artifact looting

September 20, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By WESLEY LOWERY

Columbus Dispatch

NELSONVILLE, Ohio

Dressed in a loose-fitting camouflage jacket and dirt-covered jeans, Martin McAllister wandered out of a densely wooded area at the Wayne Natural Forest Wednesday afternoon.

His arrowhead belt buckle tipped two approaching forest rangers to his intentions. After questioning and searching him, the officers discovered yet another arrowhead, this one an ancient artifact illegally dug up by McAllister just moments earlier.

But McAllister will serve no time for his “offenses;” they were part of a staged artifact-looting and crime-scene investigation meant to educate archaeologists and law-enforcement officers about how to handle suspected looting cases.

The training session was one of a dozen or so workshops conducted annually to teach more about the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, a 1979 law that made it a federal crime to remove artifacts 1,000 years or older without a permit.

Those convicted could face fines of up to $250,000 and five years of imprisonment. There also are penalties for taking artifacts that are newer.

About 25 archaeologists and law-enforcement agents, some traveling from as far as Alaska, Tennessee and South Dakota, participated in the mock investigation.