Imagine yourself walking through Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park (PFNP). As you scan the floor, you see a lovely piece of petrified wood that would look fantastic on your writing desk. You put it in your pocket, taking with you a piece of archaeological data that will never recover. While grabbing away a modest memento may seem insignificant, removing relics from their proper resting places has disastrous consequences for their scientific significance.
This is national parks, such as the PFNP, are subject to legislative safeguards that prevent anyone from stealing their treasures. However, as a recent article published by the National Parks Conservation Association highlighted, threatening people with heavy penalties and even prison time isn’t always enough to deter them from breaking the law.
Ex-PFNP curator Wendy Bustard told Jacob Baynham, “Once [relics] are taken from their true place, the amount of archaeological knowledge reduces virtually to nil.” “You can’t just return the material to wherever in the park since provenience has been lost on these objects.” What is one to do with some stolen archaeological stuff if the damage done as soon as the deed is committed? For a variety of reasons, including regret, peer pressure, a change of heart, and even the fear of being cursed or bringing about the apocalypse, many people choose to return relics to the National Parks from whence they originated.
Gallenstein wrote in her paper “Remorseful Returns: What to Do With Returned Surface Collected Items From National Park Service Units” that “a significant number of visitors specifically mentioned “Indian spirits,” prehistoric people, modern American Indians, people from the past, and/or a perceived sacredness of some of the national parks.” “People took artifacts and then returned them when they thought they had angered spirits because they wanted a connection to Native Americans and/or felt a perceived holiness of the country itself.”
Gallenstein has been assisting with “remorseful returns” since the early 1990s, although the practice considered to have started in 1935 when the PFNP received some stolen petrified wood from India. You could argue that having enough shame to return the object is a redeeming element in and of itself, but the museums now face a new problem: how to dispose of all the misplaced, now academically worthless artifacts without further altering the archaeological record of the area. The matter is more complicated than simply returning it to the park because assigning it an inauthentic last burial place disrupts the land’s history once more.
Setting up a remorseful museum at the park site (there is a permanent exhibition of returned artwork in Pompeii) or less glamorous alternatives such as PNFB’s “conscience pile” – a pile of stolen and returned artifacts added every year to hundreds of workers Accepts items, including some “letters of conscience” explaining the reason for the refund.
The lesson here is that you should never try to take anything from places of natural beauty or historic significance, because you won’t be able to return items to their natural environment if you have an attack of remorse years later, or if you’re trying to break a bad luck spell you think is related to your theft.
While we all enjoy a sentimental keepsake, taking archaeological relics to display in your living room is a destructive activity that inhibits our ability to learn from history and conserve cultural monuments for future generations. If that is not enough, the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, and the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act of 2009 may.
