European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 24, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse                                I 5 Jany 0. Kendrick of he Bureau of land management inspect Cliff dwellings of the an Tail indians at an area abandoned too yews ago. Pottery jewelry and tools for personal collections or profit. Our National heritage is being lost because of vandalism and artefact Hunting Interior Secretary Don Hodel recently said it \3 a Page from the history Book of ills nation that s been taken Lor Good. It cannot be  the pot Hunters determination is shockingly evident at poncho House ruins a spectacular Chain of ancient Arizona Cliff dwellings deep inside the Navajo reservation. Tucked 600 get Down a sheer Sandstone Wall the ruins Are difficult and dangerous to reach. By foot it takes 40 minutes to hike Down to the Canyon floor on Uncertain Clifside paths of Slippery shale then scramble up to the dwellings themselves. Navajo rangers suspect pot Hunters have flown into the Canyon Al teas once when they received a report of an unmarked Black helicopter hovering Over poncho. House. Poncho House was inhabited irom As Early As 1100 to about 1300 it appears on the National Register of historic Sites and until this Century the magnificent ruins were undisturbed but Over he past decade or so pot Hunters have systematically burrowed through the rooms thought to have been Par of a storage or granary Complex the digging has undermined the foundation and exposed the ruins to erosion. It won t to Jong until it All caves in lamented tribal archaeologist Tony Klesert the navajos have counted More than 100 pot Hunting incidents Over the past Tew years Klesert said the damage and sometimes wholesale destruction of ruins particularly pains indians who decry the 1he t of funerary goods buried with ancestors and . Who complain thai Poth Nimg destroys the research value of a site hopelessly tumbling layers of history. What takes a pol Hunter 20 minuses to dig up an Archeo Logist might spend years excavating and men piecing together the scientific clues to prehistoric people what they ate what they wore How they lived How they died. Scientists believe Modem Man can learn from the mistakes misfortunes and successes of Early cultures soil clinging to anasazi artefacts Lor example might help foretell the conditions that precede draughts like 1he prolonged one that drove the anasazi from their ancestral Homeland in the 13th Century. Although pot Hunters have hit thousands of Sites across the country archaeologists and Law officers say the problem is most acute in the archaeological Mother ode the four Corners area where Arizona. Utah Colorado and new Mexico meet. Some 1.5 million Sites irom Cliff dwellings and dry caves to buried villages Dot the Region. No one knows far certain How widespread Tho damage is but archaeologists and rangers with the Bureau of land management the . Forest service and the National Parks service estimate that 60 percent to 95 percent of All major documented Sites have been vandalized. But these rough figures Likely represent the Rock Bottom number said Parks service archaeologist Frank Mcmanamon. He said the Federal government had no comprehensive inventory of Sites let alone damage to those Sites. In southwestern Colorado alone the blk estimates there Are 100 archaeological Sites per Square mile on the 77,000 rugged acres it manages and that at least 85 percent of those Sites have been plundered. Opinions vary on just who the pot Hunters Are whether they Are organized and How profitable their Enterprise is. Most pot Hunters Are thou. J to be from the four Corners boasting a keen into it in archaeology and impressive knowledge of regional history la s unknown whether they loot primarily to Bird private collections Swap among fellow pot Hunters or soil to outsiders. Al the turn of Tho Century and in the depression museums and universities paid pot Hunters �2 to s3 per vessel and Sale of pilfered artefacts kept food on the table for Many families in the four Corners for three Summers during the depression pol Hunting was my father s Only  recalled Devar Shumway 67. Of Blanding Utah a tiny town whose pol Hunting tradition made it the target of a Federal investigation last Spring Shumway in turn passed along the practice to his it children wore alarming to authorises than Tho mom and pop pot Hunters Are professional looters who Lurn to guerrilla ladies ranchers Shepherd hrs backpackers and others have reported encounters with pot Hunters who carried automatic weapons blackened their faces and Woie camouflage fatigues. Hts Jofh tit photo we be had reports of citizens being turned Back from Public lands by individuals who put a gun in their lacs or blocked a Road with a truck said Walter Johnson the blk s director of Law enforcement and resource Protection. You d better believe they re dangerous said pole Steele a blk Ranger and self described reformed pot Hunter in Southeastern Utah. It s a holdout of the old West the use of radio scanners and lookouts with Walkie talkies by commercial pot Hunters has convinced authorities that big Money is involved and that the thieves May have formed a Loose network. But confronting vandals has proven nearly impossible for land management agencies strapped for Cash and manpower. Some of the Sites Are in such Remote rugged terrain that the thieves resort to helicopters four wheel drive vehicles or horses to reach them we Don t have the numbers to Aland watch Over every  said Johnson noting the blk manages More than 300 million acres across the country with 28 agents and 35 rangers. Agents must catch pot Hunters red handed because the 1979 archaeological resources Protection act outlaws taking artefacts Only from Public land. Digging up the same artefacts irom private property with the owner s permission would be perfectly Legal. This in line Between crime and adventure is dramatically visible in Gallup. My on a site known As Box s Canyon. Box s is a 700-room Pueblo that Zuni ancestors inhabited through the 13th Century. Today s Zuni reservation sprawls across desert terrain the size of Belgium and stops at Box s Canyon. A barbed wire Fence through the Pueblo Puls 10 percent of it on the reservation the rest on private land most of what is on private land has been destroyed by pot Hunters who used backhoes to claw through the Graves ceremonial rooms and act enl trash heaps human Bonos Are scattered around the site amid Beer cans and other debris. The sight sickens the zunis. Who can Only watch sadly from their Side of the barbed wire 8ul even if a pot Hunter is caught on federally protected land experts say judges and juries Seldom take the crime seriously and have never imposed Arpa s maximum penalty $10.000 in fines and a year m jail for a first offence Ary 24, 19s7 the stars and stripes Page 13