All eyes on Lake Okeechobee artifacts Native

[Okwes]

All eyes on Lake Okeechobee artifacts Native
American artifacts
discovered when Lake Okeechobee's waters receded are
now under constant
guard from looters.
www.miamiherald.com/569/story/134730.html
<http://www.miamiherald.com/569/story/134730.html>
BELLE GLADE -- Officer David Burnsed is alone out
here except for all
the gators.


And it's his job to keep it that way.

He's an officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation
Commission, posted at the mucky gateway to 2,000
years of Florida
history. He uses an airboat to pull over boats that
get too close to the
relics.

''The majority of people know the law and understand
we have to do what
we have to do,'' Burnsed said.

He said he's caught a few people poking around the
archaeological site.
One person said he wasn't there for artifacts -- but
for old Coke
bottles.

''Riiiiigggghhhhht,'' Burnsed said.

Burnsed is one of about a half-dozen officers
patrolling an area in Lake
Okeechobee where newly discovered Native American
artifacts are located.
There's already evidence of looting at the site,
which is accessible
only by airboat -- or a long, hot hike through
thigh-high muck.

''The people who engage in looting and trafficking
are not art lovers,''
said Clifford Brown, an archaeology professor at
Florida Atlantic
University. ``They're crooks. And they traffic in
anything they can make
money on.''

And old stuff does make money.

A casual look at the online auction house eBay shows
arrowheads on sale
for $2.99 to $200. Brown said ceramics can fetch
tens of thousands of
dollars and Maya carvings can sell for hundreds of
thousands.

The auction house Sotheby's set a new world record
for antiquities
Thursday when a bronze figure from 1 A.D., Artemis
and the Stag, sold
for $28.6 million. A spokeswoman at the auction
house said there's a
rigorous process to ensure items sold there are not
stolen.

But not everyone is as diligent.

''It's where museums get their stuff as well as
collectors,'' Brown
said.

FAMOUS FIND

Perhaps the most famous case of looting involves the
Elgin Marbles,
taken from the Parthenon by the British diplomat
Lord Elgin around 1810.
They are housed in the British Museum in London.
Greece wants them back.

But England has argued they are better preserved in
the museum.

Brown said stolen antiquities are tricky to police.

For example, he said, if people are selling
arrowheads dug from their
back yards on eBay, it's OK. It's only when relics
are taken from
federal land that it becomes a crime.

That's the case with the Lake Okeechobee site, said
the state
archaeologist.

Just disturbing the area is a first-degree
misdemeanor punishable by up
to a year in jail. Digging at an archaeological site
is a felony and
carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Local man Boots Boyer stumbled on the Lake
Okeechobee site in March,
when water levels dipped below normal. He called
county archaeologist
Christian Davenport.

Some of the artifacts discovered include a Native
American shell hammer,
some chips of Native American pottery, a broken
piece of amethyst glass
(most likely a candleholder), bottles dating back to
the early 1900s and
shell pendants that could date back 2,000 years.

Davenport also found a piece of a large ship with
copper nails; a 1928
catfish fishing boat; a large, one-cylinder gas
engine; and a
steam-powered dredge.

The ship dates back to about 1900 and is splintered
across a mile and a
half, Davenport said.

There are also some bones belonging to Native
Americans -- but their
presence was previously recorded. They last surfaced
after the 2001
drought.

Boyer said he is also pitching in, patrolling the
site on his own time.

`RESPECT THE SITE'

''I have a lot of respect for the site,'' Boyer
said. ``I ask other
people to please respect the site. It's our
history.''

He hopes one day the artifacts will be on display in
a historical museum
in Belle Glade.

''It's an awesome find,'' he said.

But even then, the objects may not be safe.

One of the largest antiquities thefts in the
southern United States
happened at the Erskine Ramsay Archaeological
Repository in Alabama in
1980.

More than 70 percent of the museum's Indian artifact
exhibit was stolen
-- 264 items -- and never recovered.

[Okwes]

Drought unearths Native American artifacts on bottom of Lake Okeechobee

Posted June 5 2007

www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-phistoric05jun05,0,\
5561704.story?track=rss
<http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-phistoric05jun05,0\
,5561704.story?track=rss>
Drought has uncovered what some are calling the most significant
archaeological find in Palm Beach County's recent history.

Now researchers are in a race against looters and the weather to
preserve it.

Since March, state and local archaeologists have been studying and
collecting artifacts from various sites around drought-ravaged Lake
Okeechobee -- places where water has receded from the bank, leaving
thousands of acres of mud and muck.

Researchers have found human bone fragments, tools, pottery fragments
and pieces of ceremonial jewelry thought to have belonged to the natives
who lived near the lake before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th
century.

Some prehistoric relics are thought to be as much as 2,000 years old and
could provide a better understanding of the complex communities and
cultures that once thrived in Palm Beach County and across South
Florida, Palm Beach County archaeologist Chris Davenport said.

Stumbling upon such a rich, previously untapped source of historic
artifacts is the kind of find that makes entire careers, said Harvey
Oyer, chairman of the nonprofit Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

Officials are trying to learn as much as they can and recover as many
weather-beaten artifacts as possible before rain refills the lake and
washes away what's left.

In the meantime, looters are believed to have struck some areas, leaving
behind deep holes in the muck where there may have been historic and
valuable objects. Florida Fish and Wildlife officers are investigating
one case involving three men on Sunday and continue to patrol the banks.

"I literally stay up at night wondering whether people are out on the
lake looting it," said Davenport, who the state gave a special permit to
legally collect artifacts.

"As important as this find is, I almost would like to see the lake fill
up because at least then these items will be protected again."

Some of these historical sites were uncovered in 2001, the last time
South Florida was in the throes of a drought as severe as this one.
Before March, there were three submerged historic sites known to
researchers but left largely unstudied. Now, Davenport said, they have
identified more than 20 sites, and it's believed that's only the
beginning.

"The prehistory of Florida is largely unknown," Oyer said. "Not because
of a lack of effort by archaeologists, but because these native cultures
did not have any writings or temples or structures to speak of. That
doesn't mean they weren't sophisticated cultures.

"To find sites so rich in culture is immeasurable."

Davenport agrees, and on Monday unveiled some of what he's recovered
during the last three months: jewelry called "gorgets" carved from conch
shells and typically worn around the neck, knees or elbows in ceremonial
dress; a worn, pointed-tip shell that was bound with leather and tied to
wood for use as an ancient hammer; fist-sized pieces of carved limestone
with holes in the center that added weight to fishing nets; and
fractured bits of pottery that offer the most important insights.

One such type of pottery is what Davenport calls a "St. John's Checker
Stamp" and looks like a piece of stone waffle cone. Its find is
significant, he said, because this variety was first discovered in
native communities in northern states, suggesting that the local
communities might have had more complex trading routes than previously
thought. Or it's pottery that was made here based on what they saw or
heard about in other communities. Similarly exotic shells and flint
tools have also been found, rarities in South Florida sites.

The drought has also unearthed several shipwrecks and other 20th century
relics such as glass soda bottles, graphite batteries and corroded
anchors. Lake water not only protected these sites from thieves and
development for hundreds of years, it also kept relics intact and in
good condition, officials said.

"I think they're very unusual, interesting and important sites," said
Clifford Brown, an assistant professor of anthropology at Florida
Atlantic University.

But in addition to shedding light on the region's unrecorded history,
the Lake Okeechobee finds have sparked tension in the local
archaeological community. Oyer, whose organization has been denied a
chance to study material on site, accuses state and county officials of
being too lax in recovering and researching relics. He says a find this
important requires more exhaustive study than what's being done.

Davenport "has a miniscule percentage of what's out there," Oyer said.
"You know it's old, but that's not enough. You have to understand the
context, you have to study the soil, the skeletal remains. This is an
opportunity that's being missed every day."

Davenport and state archaeologist Ryan Wheeler say they're making do
with what resources they have in the time that remains.

"I'm under incredible pressure to document as much as I can while the
lake is low," Davenport said. "But in the end, we're all after the same
thing here, preserving what we have so we can learn about the people and
cultures who came before us."