ARH309H1 Chapter : ARH309 Reading Notes Wk 3
Document Summary
April, 2004, agents from the bureau of land management and the u. s. forest. Buffalo soldier case old-school treasure hunters crossed a legal line from collecting to looting was an anomaly. Archaeological looting in new mexico occur in archaeology-rich trailer parks within which drug-addicted looters steal artifacts from sites to sell or trade for more drugs. The locus of archaeological crime in the southwest and across the nation is shifting into the world of drugs and guns . Example of how the drug trade overlapped with the illegal artifact trade. Undercover operation silent witness late 1990s-early 2000s, twelve indictments and convictions, network of twiggers linked by a single meth dealer. Twiggers changing the way sites are looted: due to their obsessive behaviour, they tend to pick the sites clean. Online auction sites provide a very lucrative market. Loot-meth phase introduces the kind of looting without knowledge or regard to the objects being taken, the purest commodification of the past.
