elic 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 vess