the era of indiscriminately collecting Indigenous cultural objects. But with growing park visitation and the widespread use of social media and mapping apps, visitors are ever more likely to stumble upon or seek out objects that have long persisted by dint of their relative obscurity. Meanwhile, the effects of climate change are exposing and damaging artifacts that were once safely buried. All of that means that leaving irreplaceable objects in their original locations also raises the risk of theft or destruction and that Park Service archaeologists are increasingly facing difficult decisions about the cultural resources in their care.
“I’m sure you’ve heard all about the paradox of the parks, right?” asked Josh Torres, the Park Service’s acting chief archaeologist. “We desperately want people to come and enjoy the amazing resources that we’re entrusted to preserve and protect for the American people. But there are times when doing so is almost antithetical to conservation and protection.” Conflicts between the agency’s preservation mandate and its public access goal are nothing new, but it’s up to each new generation of park stewards to renegotiate those competing priorities as attitudes evolve and new threats and challenges arise.
Well into the 20th century, archaeologists in national parks tended to collect whatever artifacts they came across, often without regard for either scientific rigor or the rights of the people whose ancestors created these objects. A Finnish museum, for example, currently houses about 600 Ancestral Puebloan artifacts that an archaeologist removed in the 1890s from what would become Mesa Verde National Park. (In 2020, the museum repatriated the remains of 20 people and 28 funerary objects that had been part of its collection to the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Acoma, the Pueblo of Zia and the Pueblo of Zuni.) Yellowstone National Park’s museum holds over 35,000 archaeological objects collected within the park in the past 150 years. Brennan said the museum at Grand Canyon holds boxes of “random soils, pottery and wood” that archaeologists collected in the 1960s and ’70s but failed to process.
“I liken it to looters or pothunters, who knowingly are stealing archaeological materials that serve no greater purpose than to grace their mantels,” Brennan said. “It doesn’t do anyone any good to collect artifacts without identifying information so they can be studied further into the future and tied back to furthering an understanding of human use and behavior.”
For many Indigenous communities, when archaeological sites are disturbed — whether by archaeologists, bulldozers or looters — much more than scientific data is lost. “The Zunis have a very personal, psychological, emotional connection to these ancestral places, which non-Zunis call archaeological sites,” said Kurt Dongoske. He’s the Tribal historic preservation officer for the Pueblo of Zuni, one of the 11 federally recognized Tribes with ancestral ties to Grand Canyon. “From a Zuni perspective, the ancestors that are residing in their eternal homes in these sites are still very much a live presence in spiritual form.” The removal of artifacts for archaeological research has severed vital connections to their ancestors, Dongoske said.
Preserving and restoring access to sacred sites and artifacts has been a priority for Indigenous activists and elders who’ve fought for Tribal sovereignty and self-determination since the American Indian Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. As a result, laws such as 1979’s Archaeological Resources Protection Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 require federal agencies to formally consult Tribal governments and other descendant groups before excavating a site.
As archaeologists established working relationships with Tribal leaders, they began to realize that many of the answers they were seeking had been there all along. This shift in perspective made it harder for archaeologists in national parks to justify collecting objects in the name of research. “Certain descendant groups say, ‘T