here’s literally no question you could ask about that artifact that I couldn’t just tell you the answer to, so just leave it alone,’” said Elizabeth Hora, an archaeologist at the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, which consults with the Park Service on archaeological research in the state’s national park sites.
It goes without saying that you shouldn’t pocket artifacts, light a campfire in an archaeological site or scratch your name in a petroglyph panel. But is it OK to check out a secret spot you read about online? As smartphones have made it easier to collect and share information about sites off the beaten path, archaeologists say each visitor’s calculus matters more than ever. “If you see something on social media, and the park hasn’t built a trail to it, there’s probably a reason for that,” Josh Torres said. “It behooves all of us as stewards of our parks to not go out and try to find it.”
If you do stumble across an artifact, the Park Service implores you not to post about it online. And while relic hunting forums and Instagram influencers are obvious targets of archaeologists’ anxiety, they’re not counting out the risks of good old-fashioned word of mouth. “You might just share something with your small group of friends, and they’re all good people,” said Ian Wright, cultural site stewardship coordinator for the Utah State Historic Preservation Office. “Then each of them shares it with their small group of friends, and they’re all good people. Even if nobody’s doing anything bad, that’s still a lot of people tromping around out there.”
Photo ©RINUS BAAK/DREAMSTIME
“Going across the landscape and collecting materials is a thing of the past” for park archaeologists, Brennan said. Instead of relocating objects to controlled storage, park staff are now figuring out how to preserve artifacts where they’re found, but that’s not always possible.
“There are lots of instances where we do collect material if it looks like those resources will be lost or stolen,” said Torres. “We have an obligation to mitigate those adverse effects to those resources however we can.” These days, Park Service policy dictates that whenever park managers need to make a call about artifacts or sites that are at risk, they discuss options with the descendant communities of the people who created them. “In some instances, the management actions necessary to preserve or protect a particular site from destruction or a federal project may be counter to wishes of the Tribes,” Torres acknowledged. “But that’s the whole purpose of the consultation process: to try and work out amenable solutions.”
And as more material traces of the continent’s human past disappear under rising seas, wash away in freak storms, burn up in raging wildfires and melt out of waning ice patches, these sorts of decisions will only become more common. After unusually heavy rains in 2013, rangers at Arizona’s Wupatki National Monument noticed that a partially exposed structure built out of sandstone slabs on a hillside had started to erode. They spotted three clay vessels, exposed to the elements and teetering in a newly formed gully. Park staff couldn’t figure how to stabilize the slope, so in concert with Tribes associated with the park and Arizona’s State Historic Preservation Office, they decided to excavate the whole structure. All told, they found seven intact pots dating to the 12th century.
It’s rare to find one intact pot in the field, let alone seven, said Gwenn Gallenstein, museum curator for the three national monuments near Flagstaff including Wupatki. “It caused quite a bit of excitement in the community.” Friends of Flagstaff National Monuments drummed up some funding for a new visitor center display, which would feature the vessels and other objects as part of a story about how climate change is accelerating threats to the park’s archaeological resources.
But in consultation for the exhibit with a group of Hopi elders, Gallenstein learned that the site had most likely been a shrine that could have been created to contain something harmful, like an illness. 