The things that hurt people
After ARPA passed in 1979, pot hunting began going upscale. Heavy duty 4-wheel drive vehicles, all terrain vehicles, helicopters, GPS devices, bulldozers and backhoes, all made quick work of a site, leaving nothing but trenches and pockmarked holes in their wake. Martin McAllister, director of Archeological Resource Investigations and long time forensics veteran, recalls becoming physically ill and having to leave one location. The reason? In their haste to excavate valuable artifacts, grave robbers had left piles of human remains scattered willy-nilly throughout the area.
Why these sites? According to Jim Allison a Brigham Young University anthropology professor, burial sites are favored locations for looting because they yield valuable objects and intact pottery that are well-preserved.
Professional looters have also became as well-versed in archeology as in weaponry.
Earl Shumway openly boasted of carrying a .44 magnum, commenting that if someone approached while he was working, that person could expect to see the business end of his pistol. In 2003, cave looter Jack Harelson was convicted of soliciting the murder of five people, including a police sergeant and local judge, who had worked to convict him on a prior looting charge. During the recent 2009 raids, intelligence gathering reported a suspect telling an undercover operative that if caught with artifacts, he would shoot it out with authorities rather than go to jail.
But then a new element entered the game.
In 2004, a connection was finally made between methamphetamine addicts and increased site looting.
• In the late 1990s and early 2000’s, a federal undercover operation revealed a network of addicts linked to a single meth dealer when agents tracked down a pair of rare Anasazi human hair leggings;
• In 2005, an Arkansas sheriff investigating an illegal meth lab, discovered an immense cache of arrowheads, many of them thousands of years old. The collection was later sold to pay for the suspect’s attorney fees;
• In 2006, Operation Bring ‘Em Back focused on looting in Central Oregon when one defendant attempted to sell a skeleton for $10,000, but took $1,000 instead to pay for more meth.
Thus the term, “twigger,” a word combining an addict’s tweaking needs with digging, was born.
New West Travel & Outdoors claims there are a number of reasons why meth and artifacts might be linked.
• Rural areas are where meth labs and arrowheads can be found;
• Some see looting as easy pickings, less risky than knocking over a liquor store;
• It’s lucrative: note the scale — “hundreds of thousands” — of artifacts. Finding a Native American grave can be like breaking into a bank vault.
Martin McAllister agrees.“When an artifact is in hand, it’s the same as having money. When someone is a looter with a substance abuse problem, the local connections and buyers are known. Those who don’t have the problems can take advantage of those who do, i.e., hire your own personal twigger.”
Few non-archeologists realize that excavating is incredibly tedious. Days spent painstakingly dusting off microbes of dirt from that 24,567th chip of pottery, are enough make anyone tear his hair out from sheer monotony.
Except for someone high on methamphetamine.
Meth gives an energy rush that can keep a person wide awake for up to 72 hours at a time. It’s a short term, non-stop vigor, matching increased focus with obsessive tendencies such as cleaning, organizing or sorting - something well suited for artifact hunting. The energy levels are so intense that instead of just taking the choice relics, an entire site is ‘hoovered’ like a vacuumed rug. Only destruction is left behind.
The drawback of meth comes with chronic abuse. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports addicts can exhibit a gamut of symptoms such as violent behavior, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, mood disturbances, and delusions – a highly volatile mix for anyone to encounter in the middle of nowhere, especially if the meth user is armed.
Meth is also highly addictive and as tolerance grows, more must be taken in order to achieve the same level of high. McAllister recalls cases where wealthy drug dealers tapped into this need by offering looters drugs in exchange for relics.
After all, $10,000 worth of meth is chump change for an artifact fetching $50,000 on the black market.
Coming on Monday, the last article in this series. Part V: Finding a solution
Resources:
• New York Times: In the Indian Southwest, heritage takes a hit
• Archeology: Cave Looter Solicits Murder
• Salt Lake Tribune: Armed suspects were a concern during American Indian artifact bust in Utah
• New West Travel & Outdoors: Indiana Jones, Meth Addict
• The Dan Cull Weblog: Are you here for the drugs?
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