American Indian cremation pit discovered on Georgia island
By Russ Bynum
Associated Press / December 21, 2008
SAVANNAH, Ga. - Exposed by erosion at the edge of a crumbling bluff, the pit discovered beneath 2 feet of sandy dirt at first appeared to be a grave just long and deep enough to bury a human body.
Excavation by archeologists on Ossabaw Island revealed something more puzzling: just a few small bones, apparently from fingers or toes, mixed with charcoal, bits of burned logs, and pottery shards predating the arrival of the first European explorers by at least a century.
The find has led researchers to suspect American Indians used the ancient pit to burn bodies of the dead, making it a rare example of cremation among the early native inhabitants of the southeastern United States.
"It's a special sort of burial," said Tom Gresham, an Athens archeologist who worked on the excavation and serves on Georgia's Council on American Indian Concerns. "The way Indian tribes over time buried their dead varied tremendously. But cremations are fairly rare."
Located 6 miles off the Savannah coast, Ossabaw Island remains one of Georgia's wildest barrier islands. Hogs, deer, armadillos, and Sicilian donkeys roam the state-owned island's 11,800 acres of wishbone-shaped uplands. Live oaks tower above the remains of slave plantations and ancient Indian burial mounds.
Researchers have found evidence that humans came to Ossabaw more than 4,000 years ago. It's believed Indians at first may have used the island as a winter camp to feed on shellfish before moving inland in the spring.
Burial mounds on Ossabaw typically hold intact human remains, said Dave Crass, Georgia's state archeologist. Archeologists said yesterday that carbon dating on charcoal from the pit place it between 1290 and 1420 AD.
Archeologists initially thought the pit could be 1,000 to 3,000 years old, based on pottery shards they found. Though carbon dating revealed it to be more recent, the find is still considered prehistoric because it predates the arrival of the first European explorers in Georgia in 1520.
Crass said other prehistoric graves on Ossabaw tend to be bodies buried intact, in a near fetal position, in shallow bowl-shaped pits. "What makes this particular site unusual is that the individual was apparently cremated and then the remains were presumably taken from this pit and interred somewhere else," Crass said.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/21/american_indian_cremation_pit_discovered_on_georgia_island/
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Feds focus on artifact trade
Feds focus on artifact trade
S.D. men charged in sale of historical Indian items
December 28, 2008
Josh Verges
jverges@argusleader.com
The federal indictments of three men accused of trafficking in Native American artifacts reveal a lucrative trade centered on the illegal harvesting of a culture's buried history.
U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said the indictments - the first of their kind in his two and a half years on the job - are partly a response to his conversations with tribal members.
"When I travel to Cheyenne River and Standing Rock ... this is very important to their culture and their tradition," he said.
Jackley said the investigation continues with the possibility of more indictments, and those already filed involve a "significant number of artifacts."
Brian Ekrem, 28, of Selby and Richard Geffre, 49, of Pierre allegedly sold three copper arm bands in violation of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act and were involved in the collection of many other artifacts, including beads, arrowheads and bone tools.
Scott Matteson, 60, of Fort Pierre is accused of buying red stone discs, arrowheads and a sandstone scraping tool, all of which had been removed from public and Indian lands.
Each man pleaded not guilty earlier this month in Pierre and was released without bond until his next court appearance. In each case, court records do not specify how the items were obtained or to which tribe they probably belonged.
Matteson said last week that he bought the items from an artifacts dealer and he did not know their origins. He said that transaction of less than $300 has resulted in what he hopes is only a temporary loss of his artifact museum.
He said federal agents recently confiscated his 38-foot trailer filled with Native American arrowheads, pots and other relics, which he has collected during the past 50 years.
"I scoured the country for those arrowheads. I put my life into this. I built this museum to go to schools to teach and show kids," Matteson said.
He said he began collecting arrowheads as a child when he would get farmers' permission to search their cornfields and keep an eye out while fishing with his father. When the Archaeological Resource Protection Act of 1979 restricted the collection of artifacts from riverbeds - navigable waterways are public land - he turned to auctions and gun shows to build his collection.
Looting on tribal lands
Federal laws prohibit the removal of human remains, funerary items and other sacred items from Indian land and public land and prohibits anyone from knowingly buying those items. The law does not stop landowners from digging or collecting those items on their own property, Jackley said.
At the Prairie Star art store in downtown Sioux Falls, owner Linda Boyd said she always is conscious of the federal laws, so she buys only modern items.
"We just deliberately don't buy old things," Boyd said. "It's something that we're always aware of."
Donna Rae Petersen, cultural programs administrator for Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, said despite the laws, looting is common.
"We've got photos of where people actually go in from the side of the river banks" to take artifacts, Petersen said. "There's quite a market for those, and I know people sell those on eBay."
In a way, the federal laws are atonement for the mistakes of the past.
The damming of the Missouri River in the 1950s and 1960s flooded the valley, disrupting the burial places of many generations of Sioux tribes, USD anthropologist Brian Molyneaux said. The reservoirs covered the homelands of their ancestors and eroded the higher banks.
"This slow and steady destruction of the banks by wave action and ice gouging exposes traces of the old occupations - and tempts artifact collectors to loot the sites," Molyneaux said in an e-mail.
"As tribes hold every place and every remnant of the past as part of a living legacy - central to their religions and histories - each act of looting is yet another in a very long line of aggressive attacks against them, when they only want to live at peace in their own land."
Past prosecutions of illegal removal
Jackley said his predecessors have prosecuted a handful of cases under the Archaeological Resource Protection Act.
In a 2002 case, Vernon Cuny Jr. of Oglala removed shell beads from a thousand-year-old skeleton and discarded the remains, Jackley said.
Walter Digmann of Rapid City admitted that in 2004, he carved initials - his own, his daughter's and his dog's - alongside ancient petroglyphs and pictographs at Craven Canyon near Edgemont.
But those previous cases were not on the scale of the current prosecution.
Peterson is encouraged by the recent indictments. She said that with only one enforcement officer for more than 3 million acres of land, the Cheyenne Sioux have been unable to arrest looters on their own. Meanwhile, she worries, collectors are profiting off the sacred items of the tribe's ancestors.
She said she's found people selling amulets that contain parts of Native American children's umbilical cords.
"To think about someone trying to sell that, it's very disconcerting," she said.
Reach Josh Verges at 331-2335.
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20081228/NEWS/812280303/1001/news
S.D. men charged in sale of historical Indian items
December 28, 2008
Josh Verges
jverges@argusleader.com
The federal indictments of three men accused of trafficking in Native American artifacts reveal a lucrative trade centered on the illegal harvesting of a culture's buried history.
U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley said the indictments - the first of their kind in his two and a half years on the job - are partly a response to his conversations with tribal members.
"When I travel to Cheyenne River and Standing Rock ... this is very important to their culture and their tradition," he said.
Jackley said the investigation continues with the possibility of more indictments, and those already filed involve a "significant number of artifacts."
Brian Ekrem, 28, of Selby and Richard Geffre, 49, of Pierre allegedly sold three copper arm bands in violation of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act and were involved in the collection of many other artifacts, including beads, arrowheads and bone tools.
Scott Matteson, 60, of Fort Pierre is accused of buying red stone discs, arrowheads and a sandstone scraping tool, all of which had been removed from public and Indian lands.
Each man pleaded not guilty earlier this month in Pierre and was released without bond until his next court appearance. In each case, court records do not specify how the items were obtained or to which tribe they probably belonged.
Matteson said last week that he bought the items from an artifacts dealer and he did not know their origins. He said that transaction of less than $300 has resulted in what he hopes is only a temporary loss of his artifact museum.
He said federal agents recently confiscated his 38-foot trailer filled with Native American arrowheads, pots and other relics, which he has collected during the past 50 years.
"I scoured the country for those arrowheads. I put my life into this. I built this museum to go to schools to teach and show kids," Matteson said.
He said he began collecting arrowheads as a child when he would get farmers' permission to search their cornfields and keep an eye out while fishing with his father. When the Archaeological Resource Protection Act of 1979 restricted the collection of artifacts from riverbeds - navigable waterways are public land - he turned to auctions and gun shows to build his collection.
Looting on tribal lands
Federal laws prohibit the removal of human remains, funerary items and other sacred items from Indian land and public land and prohibits anyone from knowingly buying those items. The law does not stop landowners from digging or collecting those items on their own property, Jackley said.
At the Prairie Star art store in downtown Sioux Falls, owner Linda Boyd said she always is conscious of the federal laws, so she buys only modern items.
"We just deliberately don't buy old things," Boyd said. "It's something that we're always aware of."
Donna Rae Petersen, cultural programs administrator for Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, said despite the laws, looting is common.
"We've got photos of where people actually go in from the side of the river banks" to take artifacts, Petersen said. "There's quite a market for those, and I know people sell those on eBay."
In a way, the federal laws are atonement for the mistakes of the past.
The damming of the Missouri River in the 1950s and 1960s flooded the valley, disrupting the burial places of many generations of Sioux tribes, USD anthropologist Brian Molyneaux said. The reservoirs covered the homelands of their ancestors and eroded the higher banks.
"This slow and steady destruction of the banks by wave action and ice gouging exposes traces of the old occupations - and tempts artifact collectors to loot the sites," Molyneaux said in an e-mail.
"As tribes hold every place and every remnant of the past as part of a living legacy - central to their religions and histories - each act of looting is yet another in a very long line of aggressive attacks against them, when they only want to live at peace in their own land."
Past prosecutions of illegal removal
Jackley said his predecessors have prosecuted a handful of cases under the Archaeological Resource Protection Act.
In a 2002 case, Vernon Cuny Jr. of Oglala removed shell beads from a thousand-year-old skeleton and discarded the remains, Jackley said.
Walter Digmann of Rapid City admitted that in 2004, he carved initials - his own, his daughter's and his dog's - alongside ancient petroglyphs and pictographs at Craven Canyon near Edgemont.
But those previous cases were not on the scale of the current prosecution.
Peterson is encouraged by the recent indictments. She said that with only one enforcement officer for more than 3 million acres of land, the Cheyenne Sioux have been unable to arrest looters on their own. Meanwhile, she worries, collectors are profiting off the sacred items of the tribe's ancestors.
She said she's found people selling amulets that contain parts of Native American children's umbilical cords.
"To think about someone trying to sell that, it's very disconcerting," she said.
Reach Josh Verges at 331-2335.
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20081228/NEWS/812280303/1001/news
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